Allen read no more verses to his guide; but he went on making them in obedience to his advice. If you wish to be a poet, you cannot, in fact, do better than make verses perpetually. It is only by the writing of poetry that one becomes a poet. This seems elementary, but it is not, because most people believe that a man is born a poet ready-made, and that verses drop from his pen like accounts in double entry from the pens of the less gifted. Besides writing rhyme, Allen read a great deal aloud to Claire and Will in the long winter evenings, while M. Philipon rolled his cigarettes, and watched the progress of the experiment. The brave Hector had a new interest in life since the commencement of the great Conspiracy. The ideas of his youth had returned to him; once more he felt himself a man among men. He was still, it is true, a teacher to young ladies; but he was more, he was much more. He was a man with power in reserve; he had still his trump card to play: because he had as yet told Claire only half of his great Thought. And by this time Will was also taken into partial confidence.

     
‘I always thought it would come to this,’ he said when Allen told him about the verses. ‘I believe if you were offered a partnership in Brimage and Waring with ten thousand a year, or the chance of being an author with what even casual sovereigns you could make, you would take that chance.’

     
‘Of course I would,’ Allen replied. ‘Why, Will, who would not? If you are a merchant, you live out your life for the sake of making money. Can that be compared with the life of an author — a poet — who shows the better life, who interprets the thoughts of the people?’

     
‘I don’t know much about the People,’ said Will. ‘If they had any thoughts they wouldn’t want an interpreter, I take it. As for your fine contempt for money, it is very noble, old boy; but I should like to be rich. A rich man has respect and power. And why shouldn’t he live the better life — eh?’

     
‘I suppose he might, if he chose,’ said Allen.

     
‘I don’t quite know what the better life is,’ Will continued. ‘I don’t suppose it’s lentils and cold water, With a hair shirt, and a cowhide for your own shoulders. Is it?’

     
‘Of course not,’ said Allen.

     
‘In that case I see no reason why any one in Brimage and Waring’s shouldn’t lead it as well as you poets. I dare say lots of the fellows do, only we don’t know. I say, Allen, what will the mater say?’

     
What indeed? Allen winced at the question, and shook his

head like Lord Burleigh, meaning an enormous quantity of expostulation, tears, and disappointment by that shake.

     
‘Yes,’ said Will, ‘you’ve got all your work cut out for you there. I should like to see my father’s face if I were to tell him that I was going to be a poet. Why, he has got five-and-twenty projects at least, besides those which doubled him up years ago, and he is only waiting till I have made some money to take it all away from me and begin again. He says I shall inherit a vast fortune.’

     
Both laughed irreverently, and it must be owned that Will interpreted the fifth commandment in a narrow sense. He honoured his father as much as he could, but that was not much.

     
‘Of course if ever I do make money I shall take care not to lose it,’ he went on. ‘But to make money one must be in the City. Allen, old boy, I should like to say something, but I am afraid.’

     
‘You cannot offend me, Will,’ said Allen, ‘not even if you were to call my poor verses detestable.’

     
‘I shouldn’t do that, certainly, because I should always see what you were driving at, and you couldn’t aim at anything
detestable. What I mean is — I sometimes think — well ——’ he hesitated a good deal, because this was really a very disagreeable thing to say; ‘I mean — sometimes it seems — that this desire for glory may be a pretty selfish kind of thing. Not that you are selfish, Allen, only there is a heap of things in the world which are waiting to be done. Wouldn’t it be better for every one to take his share of the work and do it, without caring about being praised while he is alive and remembered when he is dead? Let a man do his work as well as he can, and have done with it.’

     
Allen received this admonition meekly. He confessed that he did think very much indeed about fame; the crown of laurel seemed of all things the most desirable. He owned that it might be selfish, but that he greatly longed to distinguish himself.

     
‘After all,’ said Will. thinking, ‘if you do have the admiration of the whole world when you have got one foot in the grave, how are you to enjoy it? You don’t know it when a person a thousand miles off is reading your verses and admiring; you don’t feel it if that person is laughing or crying over you. How much better oft are you than the City man whom nobody knows?’

     
‘You have the consciousness of your life’s work,’ said Allen, with grandeur.

     
‘You don’t know,’ Will went on, ‘how often you are read and by whom. To be sure, your portrait will be in the photograph shops, between the ballet girls and the Beauties. That will be grand. And when you die your fame will do you no good,’

     
‘How do you know that?’ asked Allen sharply.

     
‘Should it, more than the memory of a good life? Never mind, Allen, you will be a poet. But you must not give up the City. You can go on working all day in an office and writing every evening. You know we are going to have great chances and get partnerships some day and be rich — but I don’t know how or when. I don’t think, so far as I know, that there has ever been yet a City merchant who was a poet — Rogers, to be sure; but he was only a banker. You shall be that phenomenon, the first great wealthy merchant who ever wrote poems.’

     
Allen laughed. A City merchant he felt very sure he should never be. How long he should have to continue a City clerk was another question, for the irksomeness of the work became every day more intolerable to him, and the drudgery more aimless. I believe that there is no torture worse than that of setting men to do work which means nothing. In military prisons they used — perhaps they do it still — to make the prisoners carry heavy shot from one place to another place and then back again — a punishment which presently brings on either softening of the brain or an irrepressible desire to kill some one. When one thinks of the City clerk — the mechanical clerk — who copies and enters and adds up all the day long, one is reminded of the prisoners who carry the shot. The reader of Lemprière, or any other person of classical tastes, may also consider the labours of Sisyphus. Allen felt all day long like the man with the heavy shot. His labours led to nothing and were of no importance to him. He would have been walking in the Forest alone, or reading with Claire, or meditating some great design. His mind was filled with books. As yet he was able to give his daily work sufficient attention, but he felt as if the burden was every day becoming greater.

     
Now I suppose that no one will believe — a thing, however, perfectly true — that neither of these lads had ever been to a theatre, or a picture gallery, or a museum, or a concert, or an opera, or a collection of Art of any kind. To realise the possibility of such destitution you have to comprehend the East End, which is, to those of us who live in the West, absolutely incomprehensible. It is like a theological dogma: it is beyond man’s reason. You have also to understand how much out of the way is this village where the boys lived. It is on the Great Eastern Railway, to begin with, which isolates and cuts it off from the cultured West; and it is five miles from a station. Why, these boys never went anywhere except to and from their school until they left it. Then they went to Liverpool Street, and from that terminus to Great St. Simon Apostle. They saw nothing.
I doubt if they had ever seen St. Paul’s — I am sure they had not seen Westminster Abbey.

     
One day Hector, thinking over his great conspiracy and its

progress, suddenly sprang from his chair with a bound, and with a loud cry as of one who has a swift and sudden pain.

     
‘Claire!’ he cried, ‘I have forgotten ——’

     
‘What have you forgotten, papa?’

     
‘I have forgotten — the Theatre.’

     
‘Forgotten the Theatre?’ she repeated, for the words meant nothing at all to her.

     
‘Heaven forgive me! I have forgotten — I — a Parisian — have forgotten the Drama! Can it be possible? This it is to have been thirty years in exile. My daughter, the education of a poet must include a knowledge of the stage, and I had overlooked it.’

     
‘Surely it is not too late.’

     
‘No; we must, however, lose no time. And there are pictures, music, sculpture, architecture — there is the whole world of Art. Good heavens! we must indeed lose no time.’

     
On the following Saturday the young men stayed in town and met Claire and her father in the evening. They all went together to the pit, where one sees best and pays least. The joy of children at a pantomime is supposed to be a pleasant sight for older eyes; yet no children at any pantomime ever fell into a greater rapture than did these two lads of eighteen — an age when many boys are sated with such sights — and the girl who sat between them. They were carried out of themselves; they were no longer in a theatre, hot, close, and crowded; they were in the forest, on the sea, in palaces among great nobles. Fortunately it was a first night; the house was quite full; the piece was so sweet and poetical that, though it pleased the critical audience of the first performance and was full of poetry and pathos, and tears and laughter, it failed to run. The author was called, and came to the front and bowed amid the acclamation of the house. Allen for his part stood up to shout.

     
They came away in a dream, Claire’s eyes still wet with the tears of the third act — they ought to have taken sheets with them instead of pocket-handkerchiefs, so moving was the situation.

     
The walk to the station, however, restored them. Will became critical about the acting, Allen about the story. One, you observe, was himself born to be a maker, the other to be a recipient of the things made. The poet gives as well as makes, the rest of us only receive: we criticise these gifts, we venture to look into the mouth of the fairest gift-horse.

     
‘But a story acted,’ said Will, ‘is ten times better than a story told.’

     
‘And there cannot be in the whole world,’ said Allen with a sigh, ‘a happier man tonight than the author of the piece.’

     
‘There will be one man as happy some day,’ Claire whispered. ‘Do you know who, Allen?’

     
He blushed. Yes, to sit in a theatre to see your own noble thoughts nobly rendered; to witness the faces of a large audience all moved by the same emotions; to say to yourself, ipse feci — it is my handiwork; this is indeed solid and substantial reward. The time is coming again when the best genius of England will be drawn back to the stage, and the writing of dramas will be the chosen life’s-work of the future Thackeray. Allen knew what Claire meant. It would be when he himself should so stand before a crowded House and hear those plaudits; but he remembered, prudently, that first he must produce a piece as worthy of applause. He must work; he must read; he must meditate.

     
Mrs. Engledew about this time became uneasy about her boy. It was not onlv that he thought so much of books and so little of the City, but that his Saturdays seemed now devoted, afternoon and evening alike, to the pursuit of pleasure, which to her was known only as ‘sight-seeing.’ What possible use or delight could it be for a boy to gape in picture-galleries? Yet that was what her son was doing. Every Saturday afternoon he spent in this manner, accompanied by Will, and sometimes by Claire. They took kindly to the world of Art; it was a new and a wonderful thing to wander among the treasures of the National Gallery. Their minds became filled with new thoughts and new images. Will, for his part, speedily assumed a critical attitude, and pronounced judgment on the execution of the work; Allen and Claire considered chiefly the conception and the thought of it.

     
Everybody ought, we know, every day to hear a piece of good music, to see a good picture, and to read a good poem; he ought, also, to eat a good dinner, to drink a good bottle of wine, to see a good play, listen to a good song, dance a good dance, flirt with a pretty girl — this must never be neglected because, above all things, it keeps the heart young — and tell a good story. We waste our lives in neglecting this golden rule. Titus once burst into tears because he had wasted a day in leaving out one or other of these precepts — he had forgotten to tell a good story; but sometimes we leave them all out. Look to it, brothers. These unhappy young men had to waste six days out of the seven. On the seventh they made up as much as possible, manifesting a Judaic objection to work beyond what is necessary. They persevered; they rested on the seventh day and studied Art. They got to know all the collections, all the galleries; they knew the masters in every school. Then they haunted the museums, until they were able to go through the Egyptian and Greek rooms without yawning. They wandered among the great buildings of London; they went to concerts and theatres; they visited every show in London during this time.

     
If there had been an æsthetic or artistic circle in their village they would all three have become self-conscious prigs;

but there was none. They were left entirely to themselves, and they remained humble, though they were the three most remarkable young people in the east of London. Claire, as wise and accomplished as Lady Jane Grey, continued to teach the rudiments of knowledge, and was patronised by the older governesses. The young men wended their way daily to the place of business, but talked, going and coming, of things which raise the soul. The aristocracy of the village had ceased to take their old interest in them. Who, among an illustrious company of eminent bankrupts, regardeth a clerk? But more and more Allen’s mind was filled with the thoughts and dreams which come in crowds to the brain of the boy of books. He should have been sent to Oxford or Cambridge, where he might have taken a fellowship, and in fulness of time drifted back to London, and so, by pleasant paths and among the younger scholars, have fallen into the better kind of authorship or journalism. But that could not be. He would have, somehow, to make his own way by rude and thorny paths. And he began to inquire, in a tentative fashion, how a man may best besiege that treasure-house of glory and of wealth which is guarded by the heroic band of publishers and editors. Of course, like every young man, he looked upon a book as a copious fountain brimming over with glory. And though as yet he took little thought about money, he had no doubt that every book brought in large sums to the fortunate writer. Some day, perhaps, among the lists in that ‘special’ column reserved for new works his own name would be found. He read the special column every morning, and used to wonder how it would feel to see your own name there. But no one in the office seemed to know anything about publishing, or books either.

     
‘We are going on well, Claire,’ said her father. ‘Our poet knows books, and literature, and art. There are three things which remain for him to know. Two of them must be left for awhile. We cannot give him time and money for travel; we cannot take him into the salons of great ladies; but we can, my dear, introduce him to the People.’