‘The London Milford?’ asked Mr. Cameron.
‘The London Milford,’ said the other. ‘Milford of the Garrick. He heard me read it, prophesied a great run for it, has promised to come down again and see it, and if it fulfils his hopes of it, means to take it up to town. In fact, it’s as good as settled.’
‘I congratulate ye, me boy,’ said Mr. Cameron. ‘I knew ye’d hit ‘em one of these fine days. I knew ut.’
Through all this, which she only half understood, Barbara was silent. She took advantage of the lull which followed the tragedian’s expression of friendly triumph to recall Mrs. Cameron to the knowledge of her presence.
‘I will speak to my uncle,’ she said, ‘and I will write to you.’
The stranger looked round when she spoke, and snatched his hat off. Barbara bent her head in general salutation and went her way. When she left the street, she could scarcely believe that it had not all been a dream. It was so unlike herself to do anything so bold-She felt more and more guilty as she waited for the coach, more and more afraid of confiding to her uncle such a scheme as that she had so hastily formed. When she reached home she made one or two inward overtures towards the attempt, but her courage failed her, and she kept silence. Yet she used to think sometimes that if she had the power to shorten poor Christopher’s struggles, it was almost a crime not to do it.
CHAPTER II.
We who live in London know well enough that its streets are not paved with gold. If one had asked Christopher his opinion on that point, he would no doubt have laughed at the childishness of the question, yet he came up to London with all the confidence and certainty which the old childish belief could have inspired. He was coming to make his fortune. That went without saying. He was brim-full of belief in himself, to begin with. ‘The world’s mine oyster,’ he thought, as the cheap parliamentary train crawled from station to station. The world is my oyster, for that matter, but the edible mollusc is hidden, and the shell is uninviting. Christopher found the mollusc very shy, the shell innutritive.
Publishers did not leap at the organ fugue in C as they ought to have done. They skipped not in answer to the adagio movement in the May-day Symphony. The oratorio conjured no money from their pockets—for the most part, they declined to open the wrapper which surrounded it, or to see it opened. Poor Christopher, in short, experienced all the scorn which patient merit of the unworthy takes, and found his own appreciation of himself of little help to him. His money melted—as money has a knack of melting when one would least wish to see it melt. Oxford Street became to him as stony-hearted a step-mother as it was to De Quincey, and at melancholy last—while his letters to Barbara became shorter and fewer—he found an enforced way to the pawnbroker’s, whither went all which his Uncle’s capacious maw would receive; all, except the beloved violin which had so often sung to Barbara, so often sounded Love’s sweet lullaby in the quiet of his own chamber. That he could not part with, for he was a true enthusiast when all was told. So he went about hungry for a day or two.