“What has come to Gerard?” cried Joe Latimer, of Guy’s, to Harry Brown, of St. Thomas’s. “I thought he despised ballet dancing. Yet this is the third time I have seen him looking on at this rot, with his attention as fixed as if he were watching Paget using the knife!”
“Can’t you guess what it all means?” exclaimed Brown. “Gerard is in love.”
“In love!”
“Yes, over head and ears in love with La Chicot—never saw such a well-marked case—all the symptoms beautifully developed—sits in the front row of the pit and gazes the whole time she is on the stage—never takes his eyes off her—raves about her to our fellows—the loveliest woman that ever lived since the unknown young person who served as a model for the Venus that was dug up in a cave in the island of Milo. Fancy having known that young woman, and put your arm round her waist! Somebody did, I dare say. Yes, George Gerard is gone—annihilated. It’s too pathetic.”
“And Mademoiselle Chicot is a married woman, I hear?” said Latimer.
“Very much married. The husband is always in attendance upon her. Waits for her at the stage door every night, or stands at the wing while she dances. La Chicot is a most correct person, though she hardly looks it. Ah! here comes Gerard. Well, old fellow, has the disease reached its crisis?”
“What disease?” asked Gerard, curtly.
“The fever called love.”
“Do you suppose I’m in love with the new dancer, because I drop in here pretty often to look at her?”
“I don’t see any other motive for your presence here. You’re not a playgoing man.”
“I come to see La Chicot simply because she is quite the most beautiful woman in face and form that I ever remember seeing. I come as a painter might to look at the perfection of human loveliness, or as an anatomist to contemplate the completeness of God’s work, a creature turned out of the divine workshop without a flaw.”
“Did you ever hear such a fellow?” cried Latimer. “He comes to look at a ballet dancer, and talks about it as if it were a kind of religion.”
“The worship of the beautiful is the religion of art,” answered Gerard, gravely. “I respect La Chicot as much as I admire her. I have not an unworthy thought about her.”
Latimer touched his forehead lightly with two fingers, and looked at his friend Brown.
“Gone!” said Latimer.
“Very far gone,” replied Brown.
“Come and try the Dutch oysters, Gerard, and let us make a night of it,” said Latimer, persuasively.
“Thanks, no. I must go home to my den and read.”
And so they parted, the idlers to their pleasure, the plodding student—the man who loved work for its own sake—to his books.
V
A Disappointed Lover
Laura Malcolm remained at the Manor House. Mr. Clare, the vicar, had persuaded her to relinquish her idea of going into lodgings in the village. It would be a pity to abandon the good old house, he argued. A house left to the care of servants must always suffer some decay; and this house was full of art treasures, objects of interest and of price which hitherto had been in Laura’s charge. Why should she not stay in the home of her girlhood till it was decided whether she was to rule there as mistress, or to abandon it forever?
“Your remaining here will not compromise your freedom of choice,” said Mr. Clare, kindly, “if you find before the end of the year that you cannot make up your mind to accept John Treverton as a husband.”
“He may not ask me,” interjected Laura, with a curious smile.
“Oh yes, he will. He will come to you in good time to offer you his heart and hand, you may be sure, my dear. It cannot be a difficult thing for any young man to fall in love with such a girl as you, and it seems to me that this John Treverton is very worthy of any woman’s regard. I see no reason why your marriage should not be a love match on both sides, in spite of my old friend’s eccentric will.”
“I’m afraid that can never be,” answered Laura, with a sigh; “Mr. Treverton will never be able to think of me as he might of any other woman. I must always seem to him an obstacle to his freedom and his happiness. He is constrained to assume an affection for me, or to surrender a splendid fortune. If he is mercenary he will not hesitate. He will take the fortune and me, and I shall despise him for his readiness to accept a wife chosen for him by another. No, dear Mr. Clare, there is no possibility of happiness for John Treverton and me.”
“My dear child, if you are convinced that you cannot be happy in this marriage, you are free on your part to refuse him,” said the vicar.
Laura’s pale cheek crimsoned.
“That would be to doom him to poverty, and to frustrate his cousin’s wish,” she answered, falteringly. “I should hate myself if I could be so selfish as to do that.”
“Then, my dear girl, you must resign yourself to the alternative: and if John Treverton and you are not as passionately in love as the young people who defy their parents and run away to Gretna Green to be married—or did when I was a young man—you may at least enjoy a sober kind of happiness, and get on as well together as the princes and
