Maurice Clissold saw that this feeling about James Penwyn’s successor was deeply rooted, and he argued the question no further. He was too happy in Justina’s society to dwell long upon discordant notes. They had so much to talk about, small as was the actual world in which they had mutual interest. Maurice had undertaken to show all the glories of London to the girl whose life hitherto had been spent in small provincial towns. Justina had ample leisure for sight-seeing, for Mr. Flittergilt’s original comedy proved an honest success, and there was no new piece yet in rehearsal at the Royal Albert Theatre. Nor had Mr. Elgood, comedian, any prudish notions about the proprieties, which might have hindered his daughter’s enjoyment of picture galleries and museums, abbeys and parks. He did not care for sight-seeing himself; for his love of art, he confessed honestly, was not strong enough to counterbalance certain gouty symptoms in his feet, which made prolonged standing a fatigue to him.
‘Let me enjoy my pipe and my newspaper, and let Justina see the pictures and crockery,’ he said, with reference to the South Kensington Museum. So the two young people went about together as freely as if they had been brother and sister, and spent many a happy hour among the national art treasures, or in Hyde Park, in whose deserted alleys autumn’s first leaves were falling.
Mr. Clissold went less and less to his clubs, and became, as it were, a dead letter in the minds of his friends.
One man suggested that Clissold must be writing a novel. Another opined that Clissold had fallen in love.
In the meanwhile Clissold was perfectly happy after his own fashion. Never had his mind been more serene—never had his verse flowed clearer in those quiet night hours which he gave to the Muses; never had the notes of his lyre rung out with a fuller melody. He was writing a poem to succeed the ‘Life Picture,’ a romance in verse, calculated to be as popular with Mudie’s subscribers as his first venture had been. He soared to no empyrean heights of metaphysical speculation, but in strong melodious verse, with honest force and passion, told his story of human joys and human sorrows, human loves and human losses.
It pleased him to hear Justina praise the ‘Life Picture,’ pleased him to think that he would be exalted in her eyes were she to know him as its author. But it pleased him still better to keep his secret, to hear her frank expression of opinion, and leave her free to form her ideal fancy of the poet.
‘The prize I seek to win must be won by myself alone,’ he thought. ‘My literary work is something outside myself. I will not be valued for that.’
One Sunday, that being Justina’s only disengaged evening, Maurice persuaded Mr. Elgood to bring his daughter to dine with him in his bachelor quarters.
‘I want to show you my books,’ he said to Justina. ‘Collecting them has been my favourite amusement for the last five years, and I think it may interest you to see them.’
Justina was delighted at the idea. Mr. Elgood foresaw something special in the way of dinner, perhaps a bottle or two of champagne, so the invitation was accepted with pleasure.