SOCIAL ROMANCE.
A "Fragment," extracted from the "Dim and Distant Future," as imagined by Mr. Frederic Harrison.
It was a delightful summer evening, and East London was looking its brightest. The eight hours of daily toil were over, and the crowds of cheery-voiced and happy-faced working people were returning in merry groups to their respective homes, scattered here and there amid the splendid Co-operative Palaces that reared their decorated fronts to meet the last golden glories of the setting sun, and break the soft progress of the gentle evening breeze laden with the sweet scents of the myriad flowers blooming freshly amid the verdant parterres and winding woodland walks by which they were divided and surrounded. Here a rippling fountain made silvery music in the air, while yonder the noisy brooklet could be traced cleaving its headlong way to the lovely Thames flowing seaward tranquilly beneath, its translucent surface being broken now and again only by the leap from an occasional seventy-pound salmon revelling for very joy in the highly hygienic quantity of the pure and crystal water in which he was existing. Above was the faultless deep-blue glory of an Italian sky. Beneath rare forest trees, amidst which the graceful oleander and wild tamarisk flourished with all their native strength, produced a grateful shade. So sparkling and smokeless was the pervading atmosphere that merely to inhale it was a physical pleasure. Sanitary and social science had indeed worked their wonders here. East London had become to all those who dwelt amid its fairy labyrinths a veritable earthly Paradise. And as he cast his shapely but workmanlike frame with an elegant ease on to one of the hundred comfortable lounges that at intervals fringed its green swards throughout their entire length and breadth, no one in the full flush of this glorious summer evening appreciated the fact more keenly than did Jeremiah Halfinch.
"Ah! this is delicious!" he cried, with enthusiasm; "just a few moments' rest here to solve this problem, and then—pour me rendre chez moi!" He spoke with all the easy grace and perfect ton of a West-End raconteur, and as he opened his basket of tools and produced from it a translation of a new work on German Philosophy, in the pages of which he was speedily engrossed, it was impossible not to be struck by his general appearance. His frame was that of an Herculean Apollo, while his head, with its finely-chiselled features and long tawny moustache, nobly set upon his shoulders, might have belonged to a Captain in the Guards. There was in his eyes something of the look of an intelligent Chief Justice, and whenever he moved it was with all the commanding dignity of a Lord Mayor. In short, it needed only a glance at Jeremiah Halfinch to set him down for what he was,—a fair specimen of the average type of the working-man of the day.
He was not, however, destined to be long in solving his philosophical problem, a light step on the gravel-path caught his ear. He looked up. "Ah! Miss Betsy Jane," he said, rising with a courtly grace as his eye rested on the trim neatly dressed form of a girl of nineteen; "so you, too, are enjoying the Elysian fragrance of this lovely evening?"
The fair girl blushed slightly. She was very lovely. Her golden hair crowned her beautifully shaped brow in broad deep bands. Her mouth had that indescribable sweetness that is often met with in those in whom a marvellously active intelligence is united to a strongly poetic temperament. Her eyes were like two exquisite saucers of liquid blue, from whose sapphire depths light and laughter seemed to sparkle up unbidden with every variation of her mobile and ever changing countenance. Yet she was only a poor work-girl making her £2 16s. 6d. a week, under the new scale of prices, by button-holeing.
"I am enjoying the evening, for who would not, Mr. Halfinch?" she answered, half demurely, with a pretty pout, "but I have just come from my Hydrostatic Class, and was thinking of looking in at the Opera on my way home. They are doing "Tristan und Isolde," and a little Wagner is such a pleasant close to the day. Do not you think so?"
"Indeed I do," he answered eagerly, "and I will accompany you—that is, if I may," he added, apologetically.
"If you may!" was the arch reply. In another minute they were strolling leisurely along, side by side, towards the "Great Square of Recreation," that was already scintillating in the distance, lit up with the electric light as with the full blaze of day. As they were emerging from the garden-path, they passed a small child. She was carrying a little stone funereal urn, and she nodded to them. They stopped for a moment.
"Why, Polly, dear, what have you got there?" asked Betsy Jane, stooping down to kiss the child.
"Oh! it's only Great Grandmother," went on the little speaker, volubly. "I'm fetching her from the Crematorium. She was only ashed yesterday, you know, and father says he would like to have her on the parlour chimney-piece as soon as possible; and so I am bringing her home."
"Well, my little woman," threw out Halfinch, kindly. "Take care you don't drop your Great Grandmother, that's all."
"Oh no! I can carry her well enough," was the prompt response; and little Polly was soon bounding away across the grass merrily, with her ancestral burthen.
Betsy Jane and Jeremiah Halfinch had presented their passes at the door of the Opera House, listened to an Act of Wagner's incomparable music, and were now once more coming homewards. Their conversation had had a wide range, touching at one moment on the Norse Saga, and at another on the Binomial Theorem; now on the Philosophy of Epictetus, and now on the latest speculations as to the basis of Nebular Matter. They were deeply interested in their talk, and it was not till they were suddenly arrested in their progress that they became aware that their path was stopped by a Policeman who was kindly stooping over a little child who was crying over something she had dropped.
"Oh! it is little Polly; and she has let her Great Grandmother fall!" cried Betsy Jane, much concerned.
"Yes, and I have spilled her; and father will be so cross!" added the child in tears, pointing to the broken vase and to some white ash that laid upon the gravel path.
"Never mind, my little woman, we will soon make it all right," answered Halfinch, at the same time taking an evening paper from his pocket, and carefully collecting the broken fragments of the vase and its contents, and making them up into a neat parcel. "There," he added, "he'll have to get a new vase. But you may tell your father I think he'll find his Grandmother all there. So wipe your eyes and get home as fast as you can."
They watched the figure of the receding child.
"You don't have much work down this way nowadays?" inquired Halfinch amiably of the Policeman.
"Much work! Why, bless you, Sir, beyond occasionally running in an Unemployed Sweater, we have none at all."
"Well, good night, Miss Betsy Jane," said Halfinch.
"Good night, Mr. Halfinch," responded the lovely girl.
Then they each turned to their brilliantly-lighted Co-operative Palace homes. Silence soon fell upon the scene. Another happy East-End day had come to its luxurious close.