THE CHIEF MOURNER. 66 -Past To where beyond these voices there is Peace." TENNYSON'S "Guinevere." PEACE! Lo! her hand is on thine heart at last. No boding echoes of the battle-blast, Whose hated sound thy earthly slumbers broke, Shall break the rest whereunto thou hast past. Earth's mightest autocrat, and yet a man Unwitched by War's wrath-stirring rataplan! A phantom haunted thee from the red snows Where with the blood of legions Plevna ran. Where War took on its deadliest, dreadfullest guise, The love of Peace possessed thee. Those closed eyes Frowned back Bellona's long solicitings. Peace smiles on them, though lid on lid now lies. Peace smiles in love, and weeps in true lament, Mourner for one who, worn and trouble-bent, Yet with firm hand held fast the Janus gates, Therefore the hearts of freemen to thee warmed Ached in the heart within that Titan frame, The boundless realm, the huge embattled host? Of what avail to solace, gladden, bless? (After a moment's hesitation.) "ANY PARTICULAR NUMBER?" But this man spurned not Peace in fear, nor shook In his allegiance to her: but would brook The fierce revilings of her angry foes Rather than face her with unfriendly look. "Otus and Ephialtes held the chain" * That bound the mighty Mars. So through his reign So Peace beside his bed chief mourner stands, WHAT HIS LORDSHIP MUST HAVE SAID.-A juryman in a recent case objected to a private soldier, who is a public servant, being described as 66 one of the lower classes." The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE explained that the witness had said "rough classes," not "lower," adding his dictum that "patent leather boots do not make a man first class." This remark was à propos de bottes; and what the Chief meant to say was evidently that " patent leather boots were not to be considered as a patent of nobility. When FRANK LOCKWOOD, Q.C., M.P., Attorney-General, heard of it, he wept as for another good chance gone for ever. (A Colour-Study in Green Carnations.) THEY were sitting close together in their characteristic attitudes; the knees slightly limp, and the arms hanging loosely by their sides; Lord RAGGIE TATTERSALL in the peculiar kind of portable chair he most affected; FUSTIAN FLITTERS in a luxurious sort of handbarrow. The lemon-tinted November light of a back street in a London slum floated lovingly on their collapsed forms, and on the great mass of weary cabbage-stalks that lay dreaming themselves daintily to death in the gutter at their feet. They were both dressed very much alike, in loosely-fitting, fantastically patched coats. Lord RAGGIE was wearing a straw hat, with the crown reticently suggested rather than expressed, which suited his complexion very well, emphasising, as it did, the white weariness of his smooth face, with the bright spot of red that had appeared on each cheek, and the vacant fretfulness of his hollow eyes; he held his head slightly on one side, and seemed very tired. FUSTIAN FLITTERS had adopted the regulation chimney-pot hat, beautiful with the iridescent sheen of decay; he was taller, bulgier, and bulkier than his friend, and allowed his heavy chin to droop languidly forward. Both wore white cotton gloves, broken boots, and rather small magenta cauliflowers in their button-holes. "My dear RAGGIE," said Mr. FLITTERS, in a gently elaborate voice, and with a gracious wave of his plump straw-distended white fingers towards his companion's chair; 66 you are looking very well this afternoon. You would be per fectly charming in a red wig and a cocked-hat, and a checked ulster with purple and green shadows in the folds. You would wear it beautifully, floating negligently over your shoulders. But you are wonderfully complete as you are!" "That is so true!" acquiesced RAGGIE, with perfect complacency. "I am very beautiful. And you, FUSTIAN, you are so energetically inert. Are you going to blow up to-night? You are so brilliant when you blow up." "I have not decided either way. I never do. It will depend upon how I feel in the bonfire. I let it come if it will. The true impromptu is invariably premeditated." "We must give them time. Already they have copied our distinctive costume, caught our very features and colouring. Some day, FUSTIAN, Some day they will adopt our mystic emblem-the symbol that is such a true symbol in possessing no meaning whatever-the Magenta Cauliflower! And then-and then-." 66 46 -It will be time for Us to drop it," continued Mr. FUSTIAN FLITTERS, with his pecular smile of inscrutable obviousness. Beautiful rose-coloured children!" murmured Lord RAGGIE, dreamily; "how sad to think that they will all grow up and degenerate into pork-butchers, and generals, and bishops, and absurdly futile persons of that sort! But listen; it is so sweet of them-they are going to sing an exquisite little catch I composed expressly for them, a sort of mellifluously raucous chant with no tune in particular. That is where it is so wonderful. True melody is always quite tuneless!" One by one the shrill, passionate young voices chimed in, until the very lamp-posts throbbed and rang with the words, and they seemed to wander away, away among the sleeping pageant of the chimney-pots, away to the burnished golden globes of the struggling pawnbroker. "Please ter remember. The Fifth o' November. For Gun Powder Plot. Ter blow up the King and 'is Porliment. Shall never. Be. Forgot! 'Oller, Boys, 'Oller!" Lord RAGGIE, with his head bent, listened with a smile parting the scarlet thread of his lips, a smile in his pretty hollow eyes. "I wonder why people should be exhorted to remember such a prosaic and commonplace crime as that," he meditated aloud: "a crime, too, that had not even the vulgar merit of being a success! There is only one stimulating thing in the world," was the languid "and that is a answer; soporific. But see, FusTIAN, here comes one of those unconsciously absurd persons they call policemen. How stiffly he holds himself. Why is there something so irresistibly ludicrous about every creature that possesses a spine? Perhaps because to be vertebrate is to be normal, and the normal is necessarily such a hideous monstrosity. I love what are called warped distorted figures. The only real Adonis nowadays is a Guy." And the shrill voices of the young choristers, detaching themselves one by one from the melodic fabric in which they were enmeshed, grew fainter and fainter still-until they slipped at last into silence. FUSTIAN, did you notice? Our rose-white adherents have abandoned us. They have run away-done a guy,' as vulgarians express it." They have done two," said Mr. FLITTERS correctively; "which only proves the absolute sincerity of their devotion. Is not the whole art of fidelity comprised in knowing exactly when to betray?" "My dear Raggie, you are looking very well this afternoon." "Isn't that rather selfcontradictory ?" said RAGGIE, with his pretty quick smile. "Of course it is. Does not consistency solely consist in contradicting oneself? But I suppose I am a trifle décousu." "You are. Indeed, we are both what those absurd clothes-dealing Philistines would call threadbare '-you and I." "I hope se, most sincerely. There is something so hopelessly middle-class about wearing perfectly new clothes. It always reminds me of that ridiculous Nature, who will persist in putting all her poor little trees into brand-new suits of hideous non-arsenical green every spring. As if withered leaves, or even nudity itself, would not really be infinitely more decent! I detest a coat that is what the world calls a 'fit!'" 66 "Clothes that fit," observed Lord RAGGIE, gravely, are the natural penalty for possessing that dreadful deformity, a good figure. Only exploded mediocrities like TUPPER and BUNN and SHAKSPEARE ought to have figures." Had SHAKSPEARE a figure? I thought it was only a bust." "We shall have our little bust by and by, I suppose," said RAGGIE, pensively. "I wonder when. I feel in the mood to sally forth and paint the night with strange scarlet, slashed with silver and gold, while our young votaries-beautiful pink boys in paper hats-let off marvellous pale epigrammatic crackers and purple paradoxical squibs in our honour." "See, RAGGIE, here come our youthful disciples! Do they not look deliciously innocent and enthusiastic? I wish, though, we could contrive to imbue them with something of our own lovely limpness-they are so atrociously lively and active." "That will come, FUSTIAN," said Lord RAGGIE, indulgently. 66 66 "How original you are to-day, FUSTIAN! But what is this crude blue copper going to do with you and me? Can we be going to become notorious-really notorious-at last?" "I devoutly trust not. Notoriety is now merely a synonym for respectable obscurity. But he certainly appears to be engaged in what a serious humourist would call 'running us in.'" "How pedantic of him! Then shan't we be allowed to explode at all this evening ?" "It seems not. They think we are dangerous. How can one tell? Perhaps we are. Give me a light, RAGGIE, and I will be brilliant for you alone. Come, the young Shoeblack bends to his brush, and the pale-faced Coster watches him in his pearly kicksies; the shadows on the mussels in the fish-stall are violet, and the vendor of halfpenny ices is washing the spaces of his tumblers with primrose and with crimson. Let me be brilliant, dear boy, or I feel that I shall burst for sheer vacuity, and pass away, as so many of us have passed, with all my combustibles still in me! And with gentle resignation, as martyrs whose apotheosis is merely postponed, Lord RAGGIE and FUSTIAN FLITTERS allowed themselves to be slowly moved on by the rude hand of an unsympathetic Peeler. |