And when he wasn’t reading Silas Marner, or looking out of window at the flying landscape, and watching it revolve round its middle distance (as it always seems to do), he was sympathetically taking stock of his fellow-passengers, and mildly envying them, one after another, indiscriminately!
A fat, old, wheezy philistine, with a bulbous nose and only one eye, who had a plain, sickly daughter, to whom he seemed devoted, body and soul; an old lady, who still wept furtively at recollections of the parting with her grandchildren, which had taken place at the station (they had borne up wonderfully, as grandchildren do); a consumptive curate, on the opposite corner seat by the window, whose tender, anxious wife (sitting by his side) seemed to have no thoughts in the whole world but for him; and her patient eyes were his stars of consolation, since he turned to look into them almost every minute, and always seemed a little the happier for doing so. There is no better stargazing than that!
So Little Billee gave her up his corner seat, that the poor sufferer might have those stars where he could look into them comfortably without turning his head.
Indeed (as was his wont with everybody), Little Billee made himself useful and pleasant to his fellow-travellers in many ways—so many that long before they had reached their respective journeys’ ends they had almost grown to love him as an old friend, and longed to know who this singularly attractive and brilliant youth, this genial, dainty, benevolent little princekin could possibly be, who was dressed so fashionably, and yet went second class, and took such kind thought of others; and they wondered at the happiness that must be his at merely being alive, and told him more of their troubles in six hours than they told many an old friend in a year.
But he told them nothing about himself—that self he was so sick of—and left them to wonder.
And at his own journey’s end, the farthest end of all, he found his mother and sister waiting for him, in a beautiful little pony-carriage—his last gift—and with them sweet Alice, and in her eyes, for one brief moment, that unconscious look of love surprised which is not to be forgotten for years and years and years—which can only be seen by the eyes that meet it, and which, for the time it lasts (just a flash), makes all women’s eyes look exactly the same (I’m told): and it seemed to Little Billee that, for the twentieth part of a second, Alice had looked at him with Trilby’s eyes—or his mother’s, when that he was a little tiny boy.
It all but gave him the thrill he thirsted for! Another twentieth part of a second, perhaps, and his brain-trouble would have melted away; and Little Billee would have come into his own again—the kingdom of love!
A beautiful human eye! Any beautiful eye—a dog’s, a deer’s, a donkey’s, an owl’s even! To think of all that it can look, and all that it can see! all that it can even seem, sometimes! What a prince among gems! what a star!
But a beautiful eye that lets the broad white light of infinite space (so bewildering and garish and diffused) into one pure virgin heart, to be filtered there! and lets it out again, duly warmed, softened, concentrated, sublimated, focused to a point as in a precious stone, that it may shed itself (a love-laden effulgence) into some stray fellow-heart close by—through pupil and iris, entre quatre-z-yeux—the very elixir of life!
Alas! that such a crown-jewel should ever lose its lustre and go blind!
Not so blind or dim, however, but it can still see well enough to look before and after, and inward and upward, and drown itself in tears, and yet not die! And that’s the dreadful pity of it. And this is a quite uncalled-for digression; and I can’t think why I should have gone out of my way (at considerable pains) to invent it! In fact—
“Of this here song, should I be axed the reason for to show,
I don’t exactly know, I don’t exactly know!
But all my fancy dwells upon Nancy.” …
“How pretty Alice has grown, mother! quite lovely, I think! and so nice; but she was always as nice as she could be!”
So observed Little Billee to his mother that evening as they sat in the garden and watched the crescent moon sink to the Atlantic.
“Ah! my darling Willie! If you could only guess how happy you would make your poor old mammy by growing fond of Alice. … And Blanche, too! what a joy for her!”
“Good heavens! mother. … Alice is not for the likes of me! She’s for some splendid young Devon squire, six foot high, and acred and whiskered within an inch of his life! …”
“Ah, my darling Willie! you are not of those who ask for love in vain. … If you only knew how she believes in you! She almost beats your poor old mammy at that!”
And that night he dreamed of Alice—that he loved her as a sweet good woman should be loved; and knew, even in his dream, that it was but a dream; but, oh! it was good! and he managed not to wake; and it was a night to be marked with a white stone! And (still in his dream) she had kissed him, and healed him of his brain-trouble forever. But when he woke next morning, alas! his brain-trouble was with him still, and he felt that no dream kiss would ever cure it—nothing but a real kiss from Alice’s own pure lips!
And he rose thinking of Alice, and dressed and breakfasted thinking of her—and how fair she was, and how innocent, and how well and carefully trained up the way she should go—the beau ideal of a wife. … Could she possibly care for a shrimp like himself?
For in his love of
