and the result was a queer mingling of melodies--now a bizarre polonaise of Chopin, with its fantastic blending of patriotic joy and despairing pain, then a rush of stormy chords, preluding a Spanish dance, instinct with the amorous languor and fierce passion of the south. Outside, the shrill wind could be heard sweeping past, a sheet of rain would lash wildly against the windows, and at intervals the musical thunder of the organ sounded from the adjacent church.
Keith smoked away steadily and listened drowsily to the pleasant mingling of sounds, until Ezra began to play the Traviata music, with its feverish brilliancy and undercurrent of sadness. Then he suddenly started, clenched his hand, and taking his pipe from his mouth, heaved an impatient sigh, upon hearing which, Lazarus stopped playing, and turned slowly round.
"A link of memory?" he said, in his soft voice, referring to the music.
Stewart replaced his pipe, blew a thick wreath of smoke, and sighed again.
"Yes," he replied, after a pause; "it recalls to me--a woman."
Ezra laughed half sadly, half mockingly.
"Always the Eternal feminine of George Sand."
Keith sat up cross-legged in front of the fire and shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't be cynical old chap," he said, glancing round; "I'm sick of hearing the incessant railing against women--good heavens! are we men so pure ourselves, that we can afford to cast stones against the sex to which our mothers and sisters belong."
"I did not mean to be cynical," replied Ezra, clasping his hands round one of his knees, "I only quoted Sand, because when a man is thinking, it is generally--a woman.
"Or a debt--or a crime--or a sorrow," interposed the other quickly; "we can ring the changes on all of them."
"Who is cynical now?" asked the Jew, with a smile.
"Not I," denied Keith, emphatically, drawing hard at his pipe; "or if I am, it is only that thin veneer of cynicism, under which we hide our natural feelings now-a-days; but the music took me back to the time when 'Plancus was consul'--exactly twelve months ago."
"Bah! Plancus is consul still; don't be downhearted, my friend; you are still in the pleasant city of Prague."
"Pleasant? that is as it may be. I think it a very disagreeable city without money. Bohemianism is charming in novels, but in real life it is generally a hunt after what Murger calls that voracious animal, the half-crown."
"And after women!"
"Ah, bah! Lais and Phryne; both charming, but slightly improper, not to say expensive."
"Take the other side of the shield," said the Jew gently.
"Lucretia, and--and--by Jove, I can't recollect the name of any other virtuous woman."
"Who is the lady of the music?"
"My affianced wife," retorted Stewart curtly.
"Ah!" said Ezra thoughtfully, "then we have a feeling in common, I am also engaged."
Stewart laughed gaily.
"And we both think our lady-loves perfect," he said lightly. "'Dulcinea is the fairest woman in the world,'--poor Don Quixote."
"Mine is to me," said Ezra emphatically.
"Of course," answered Stewart, with a smile. "I can picture her, tall, dark, and stately, an imperial daughter of Judah, with the beauty of Bathsheba and the majesty of Esther."
"Entirely wrong," replied Lazarus dryly, "she is neither tall, dark, nor stately, but--"
"The exact opposite--I take your meaning," said Keith composedly; "well, my Dulcinea is like the sketch I have given--beautiful, clever, poor, and--a governess."
"And you haven't seen her for a year?"
"No--a whole twelvemonth--she is up Sandhurst way trying to hammer dates and the rule of three into the thick heads of five small brats, and I--well I'm an unsuccessful literary man, doing what is vulgarly known as 'a perish.'"
"What made you take up writing?" asked Lazarus.
"What made me take up writing?" repeated Stewart, staring vaguely into the fire. "Lord knows--destiny, I suppose--I've had a queer sort of life altogether. I was born of poor but honest parents, quite the orthodox style of thing, isn't it?"
"Are your parents alive?"
"Dead!" laconically.
There was a pause of a few moments, during which time Keith was evidently deep in thought.
"According to Sir Walter Scott," he observed at length, "every Scotchman has a pedigree. I've got one as long as the tail of a kite, only not so useful. I'd sell all my ancestors, as readily as Charles Surface did his, for a few pounds. My people claim to be connected with the royal Stewarts."
"Your name is spelt differently."
"It's spelt correctly," retorted Keith coolly, "in the good old Scottish fashion; as for the other, it's the French method acclimatised by Mary Stuart when she married the Dauphin of France."
"Well, now I know your pedigree, what is the story of your life?"
"My life?--oh! I'm like Canning's knife-grinder. 'Story, I've got none to tell.' My father and mother found royal descent was not bread and butter, so they sold the paternal acres and came out to Australia, where I was born. The gold fever was raging then, but I suppose they inherited the bad luck of the Stewarts, for they did not make a penny; then they started a farm in Gippsland and ruined themselves. My father died of a broken heart, and my mother soon followed, so I was left an orphan with next to nothing. I wandered all over Australia, and did anything that turned up. Suppressing the family pride, I took a situation in a Sandhurst store, kept by a man called Proggins, and there I met Eugénie Rainsford, who, as I told you, taught the juvenile Progginses. I had a desultory sort of education from my father, and having read a good deal, I determined to take to literature, inspired, I suppose, by the poetic melancholy of the Australian bush. I wrote poetry with the usual success; I then went on the stage, and found I wasn't a heaven-born genius by any means, so I became a member of the staff of a small country paper, wrote brilliant articles about the weather and crops, varied by paste-and-scissors' work. Burned the midnight oil, and wrote some articles, which were accepted in Melbourne, so, with the usual prudence of genius, I threw up my billet and came down here to set the Thames, or rather the Yarra, on fire. Needless to remark, I didn't succeed or I shouldn't be here, so there is my history in a nutshell."
"And Miss Rainsford?"
"Oh, I engaged myself to her before I left Sandhurst," said Keith, his face growing tender, "bless her--the letters she has written me have been my bulwark against despair--ah! what a poor devil a man is in this world without a good woman's love to comfort him."
"Are you doing anything now?" said Ezra thoughtfully.
"Nothing. I'm leading a hand-to-mouth, here-to-day-gone-to-morrow existence. I'm a vagabond on the face of the earth, a modern Cain, Bonnie Prince Charlie in exile--the infernal luck of my royal ancestors still sticks to me, but, ah, bah!" shrugging his shoulders, "don't let's talk any more, old chap, we can resume the subject to-morrow, meanwhile play me something. I'm in a poetic mood, and would like to build castles in the air."
Ezra laughed, and, turning to the piano, began to play one of Henselt's morceaux, a pathetic, dreamy melody, which came stealing softly through the room, and filled the soul of the young man with vague yearnings.
Staring idly into the heart of the burning coals, he saw amid the bluish flames and red glimmer of the fire a vision of the dear dead days of long ago--shadows appeared, the shadows of last year.
A glowing sunset, bathing a wide plain in delicate crimson hues; a white gate leading to a garden bright with flowers, and over the gate the shadow of a beautiful woman stood talking to the shadow of a man--himself. Mnenosyne--saddest of deities--waved her wand, and the shadows talked.
"And