"I cannot tell you how deeply grieved we both were to hear the occasion of your flight from Milan. Your landlady, Maria, told me the sad news. I was, indeed, greatly shocked and grieved to hear it. We can easily understand how it was, in the first terrible moment of your affliction, you should not care to come near even us. But I cannot help wishing that by some accident or another it had so chanced I left Milan by the train that took you away, though I might not be allowed to intrude upon you in the journey. "My dear Lavirotte, I know as well as anyone that under occasions of this kind words of consolation are generally outrages. My whole object in writing this letter is simply to say how sorry I am that I am not with you, and how sorry we both are for the cause which took you away. "I am sure the best thing you can do, under the circumstances, is to come back here as quickly as ever you can. Do not lose a moment. I am altogether thinking of you, and not of the desire either of us has to see you. To show you I am in earnest in this, if you tell me you will come, I will promise never to go near you until you give me leave. It is the commonest of commonplaces, but it is one of the truest, that hard work is the best way of occupying time, when time is bitter or heavy. My dear Lavirotte, come back and plunge headlong into work. We will not trouble you. When you wish to see us you know where to find us. I will not now say any more, except what you well know already, that our hearts are, and always will be, with you.

"Yours as ever,
"Eugene O'Donnell."

When Lavirotte finished reading this letter he fell into a long reverie. With head depressed and slow steps, he passed down Cheapside, Newgate Street, and over the Viaduct. A couple of hours ago it seemed to him his mind was made up beyond the possibility of change. And now he was not thinking of change. He was not thinking at all, but allowing to drift slowly across his imagination a long panorama of that future which he had resolved to abandon. He saw once more the life at Milan, the life he had been leading, the life Eugene would continue to lead for a while longer. He saw the moment when Eugene would finally take leave of that city and come northward, perfected in his art. He saw Eugene's arrival in London, with such good words for heralds as made him sought after in his profession. He saw obsequious managers with Eugene, flattering him, coaxing him, pressing him to accept splendid engagements. He saw the admiring faces at the private trial of Eugene's voice. He saw the smiles of delight, the hands that applauded. He saw the flush of triumph upon Eugene's face, Eugene's bows of acknowledgment. And behind all, he saw Nellie. He saw her radiant, transfigured, divine, sitting apart, isolated from all by the exquisite delicacy of her beauty, the exquisite delicacy of her love, the exquisite delicacy of her spirit. He saw the glance that shot from Eugene's faithful eyes to hers. He saw that in that room, that hall, the only thought between these two people was the thought of their love, the high and holy love of perfect faith, in which there is no more room for desire in the heart, in which the two spirits are not one in essence, but one in form, wherein neither exists apart, and each is complementary to the other. He saw these two married lovers had no need for words. They were with each other. That was enough. Each of them knew what this meant, how much it meant, down to the utmost limit of their joint happiness. Ah, what happiness was this! What joy, what unutterable rapture! To love thus wholly and without guile and without thought, without even consciousness of loving. What could be more! What could be more than this rich completion of spirit! What were all the gross, material ambitions of the world compared to such love as this! This was not the love of line and colour, the love of form and voice, the love of youth and sprightliness, the love of device or trick. Time would be powerless against this. The line and colour, the form and voice had been to this but the prelude to the imperial theme. These two spirits were now commingling to the perfect tones of the most glorious anthem, chanted by the angels for the accord of man on earth. He saw the crowded theatre, the blaze of light, the circles of wealth, and youth, and beauty, and fashion, of title and distinction, hushed for the great moment. He heard the orchestra pick up a thread of silver melody. He listened as the orchestra seemed, in carelessness, to lose that hint of melody. He heard that hint again, from a single string, and then to a note of sonorous undertone, he saw the great tenor step forth. He heard that voice begin farther away than the most delicate breathing of the instruments below, like a murmur coming from mid-air, under the stars. The sound descended, broadening and mellowing as it came, until it touched the earth in notes of resonant manhood, and then burst forth, complaining loud. Complaining of love denied, of true love lost for ever. He heard the song go on to the melodious climax of its final woe, and then he heard a mighty crash like the sound of an avalanche shot from a giddy, frozen cliff down a precipitous way to the valley below. He looked, he saw men on their feet cheering and clapping their hands, and women waving their handkerchiefs. Women flung their bouquets, their bracelets, their rings upon the stage-these women drunk on a human voice. He heard the "bravos," the "encores," cried by thousands of throats, by those people who were at once the slaves and tyrants of Eugene. Then, again, he heard the orchestra pick up that silver thread of melody- He threw up his head. Where was this? Had he got so far? and how had he wandered here? Ah! Lincoln's Inn Fields! The College of Surgeons! Surgery, pain, disease, death! What a contrast to that great vision he had just seen! Good God, what a contrast! He turned hastily out of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He could not endure the dingy, decayed look of that rusty old square. He had once been told that the area of this square corresponded with the area of the base of the great Pyramid. Surgeons and embalmers, the Great Pyramid and mummies, Lincoln's Inn Fields and ghouls! These were ghastly subjects. He had never noticed before how stark and bleak and cold, how skeleton-like the houses in Lincoln's Inn Fields were. It was a horrible place at this time of year, when the leaves were dropping, when the leaves already down had begun to rot. The youth and manhood of the year were gone. It was in the sere, the yellow leaf. No wholesomeness or joy could now be hoped for until the spring was rife once more. The earth had ceased to aspire to heaven, and all the glorious and beautiful efflorescence of earth towards the sun was falling back once more to the dun clay from which, by the aid of silver rains and violet and ruby dews, the sun of spring had stolen such verdant marvels. The dun clay, the dun earth, surgeons and mummies, pyramids and ghouls; ah, there was no cheerfulness, no wholesomeness in any of them! Think of an English river with willows and swans, and the light of summer, and the blue sky, and the delicate, slender, upward-pointing reflections in the water, and the music of the bees, and the inextricably-mingled odour of innumerable flowers, and the songs of birds, surprising the mellow shades of inner woods. And then the beauty of woman, and the strength and glory of youth in man, and the triumph and glory of song in man, and then the voice of song that made the birds seem but the lifting of one leaf amid the tuneful murmurs of a mighty wood, and the voice of woman answering to love in the accents of the song- Surgeons and mummies, pyramids and ghouls. God made none of these for man. But all the others had the touch of his great handicraft, the imperial fashion of his august design, the tones of sound and colour, half hidden from the heedless, but revealed in their exquisite perfection to the poetic sense. Surgeons and mummies, pyramids and ghouls. Bah! Overhead, what a gloomy sky! The sun was now shining on all the squares and streets of Milan!

CHAPTER XVIII

It was hard for Lavirotte, after his life of aspiration after musical distinction, his devotion to the art, his study of it, his year at Milan, to drop all this and take up a subject which, although it had, now and then, occurred to his mind as one likely to enthral him, had so little in consonance with that which he was about to lay down. It was hard for him, at one cast of the die, to turn his face away from all the bright, luxuriant pageantry that waits upon the gifted and cultivated human voice, and give his thoughts to bones, and the immediate clothing of bones; to disorders of the human frame, and the immediate occasion of these disorders; to the coarse familiarity of the dissecting-room, and the function of inquiry which must be attuned to callous sentiment. In the art of the singer, when the rudiments of his art are his, perception, sympathy, sentiment, exaltation of emotional ideas, are the basis upon which his success must rest. In the art of the doctor, rigid, frigid examination, and mathematical deductions must lead to the only results which he desires. Lavirotte was torn anew with the conflict which years ago had raged within him. His resolution of that morning, although it then seemed firm as the solid earth on which he stood, now waved and swayed as though it were no more than an instable ship upon an unstable sea. Eugene's letter had brought back to him vividly all his dreams of the past, and in that vision of Eugene's future he had done little more than reproduce the dreams in which he had himself indulged as to his own career. His heart, as far as love was concerned, lay in the tomb, and to judge by his present frame of mind, there was no likelihood the sight of woman would ever again move him as it had when Dora was the guiding star of his existence. Yet he knew that with time the acuteness of his present suffering would pass away. He felt at that moment it would be cruel that his woe should leave him. But his reason told him it would. He knew that as years went by these love troubles of man's early life grew less and less until they seemed insignificant, paltry, ludicrous. But in this, the very height of his affliction, the notion his sorrow might die was an additional cause of torture to him. He knew that in his present state of mind the future was sure to display a gloomy and forbidding aspect. He knew that people, in the presence of great personal grief, were usually indifferent to any considerations but those of their grief. He knew that when a man loses all his fortune, it is no great additional blow to that man to hear that a horse of his is killed. He was quite prepared that the whirligig of time would, to some extent, set him right in the main affairs of life. But now he was in no humour to discount his present situation. His woe seemed to soothe him. It was the only consolation he had. Still he could not banish from his mind the influence of that glorified vision. He could not get out of his mind the fact that some day, soon, the voice of Eugene O'Donnell would burst upon English ears and take them captive. To be a great tenor was one of the most glorious privileges given to man during his lifetime. The general, the statesman, the painter, had all during their lifetime periods of great triumph. There was no period when, like the statesman, he was out of power; when, like the general, his sword was sheathed in the days of peace; or when, like the painter, he was busy at his easel at the work which, when completed, would bring him applause. Every time a popular tenor sang, the public testified to the utmost their enjoyment and appreciation. The tenor was not bound to any land. He needed no majority, no army, no colour-box. He was the only man who could make a fortune with absolutely no stock-in-trade except what nature and art had given him. He was equally effective by the Tiber or the Neva, in Buda-Pesth or Chicago. Climates or tongues had no power of limiting him. English, Italian, French, German, it did not matter what his nationality, or what his language, he appealed to all hearts, to all peoples. In the face of this universality of tenors in power, what a limited hole-and-corner thing the art of medicine seemed. It was all locked up in crooked words, in dreary books. Its terminology was supplied by the inarticulated bones of dead languages. The greatest glory it afforded was an article in a learned magazine, a reference to one's labour by some distinguished fellow-worker. How had he ever come to think of this as a career? It was no livelier than living in a vault, spending one's life in a charnel-house. Bah! He would get away from this gloomy climate, and this still more gloomy idea of medicine. He would change his mind again. A man had a perfect right to change his mind. He would go south once more, to the land of colour and song, and devote himself anew to the glorious art he had long ago selected. He would be a singer-a tenor, a glorious tenor, an unrivalled tenor. He would be a head and shoulders taller than any of the pigmy tenors now on the boards. He would be town talk, world talk. He would be a second and a greater Mario. Everything was in his favour. He had a fine voice, fine manner, good stage presence, and he felt sure he could act. He would be greater than Eugene. He had more go and dash about him than Eugene, and there was not much to choose between their voices. Some people said Eugene's voice was more sympathetic and tender than his, and that he never could approach the Irishman in cantabile singing. But, after all, who cared much about cantabile singing? What people liked most was to hear the whole organ, the full chest; and in the higher register of the chest he could walk away from Eugene. He would not deny to himself that the quality of Eugene's voice was superior. It might be Eugene would never fail to melt his audience, but he, Lavirotte, could rouse them, and in martial music would make Eugene seem a tame and somewhat faded hero. What was this? Here was O'Donnell once more occupying all his thoughts, absorbing all his attention! It was only that morning he had fully considered his relation with the O'Donnells, and traced their hand in every misfortune which had befallen him of late. Taken in this regard, it seemed as though Eugene was going to dominate the future. One of his reasons for thinking of taking up mental pathology as a career, was in order that he might escape from the circle in which Eugene moved. If he had really adopted that gloomy art as a profession, and if, when he was finally committed to it and could not think of going back to singing, Eugene made a great reputation on the boards, how should he feel? There was no doubt whatever he should feel extraordinarily jealous. There is no doubt whatever he could not endure to see Eugene's triumphs. He could not go near the theatre, he could not read the reports in the newspaper, he could not hear with patience those praises of Eugene. It would have been a fatal mistake for him to take to medicine and give up his present profession. It would have embittered all his life and made him feel an undying enmity towards Eugene. Yes, it would be much better for him to go on and qualify himself for opera, and spend the remainder of his life in friendly rivalry with Eugene, rather than breed hatred of his friend by abandoning his beloved career. Where was he now! Ay, this was Covent Garden. This was to be the scene of his future triumphs. He and Eugene were to be the leading tenors. They were to sing alternately, and public favour was to be slightly on the side of him, Lavirotte. Just slightly in his favour. Enough to gratify him without hurting Eugene. He would not like to hurt Eugene. He would let no man hurt him. But he himself had little desire to play second fiddle. On the lyric stage he should be first, and Eugene second. He did not want more money than his friend. They should each have a hundred a night, say, and he a little more popularity, a little more fame. He would not stop in this dingy, murky climate any longer. He would start at once for Italy. He would be in Milan before the end of the week. He would embrace his old friend Eugene, take up his old studies, and fall once more into his old ways. Lavirotte hailed a cab and drove back to Porter Street. He had little or no preparations to make for his departure, and that evening he was on the way to Italy. He lost no time in calling on his friends. He found Eugene and Nellie at home. He shook hands cordially with both, and said: "Of course, Eugene, the minute I got back I came to see you and your wife." "And the boy?" said Mrs. O'Donnell with a smile, as the door opened and the child was carried into the room by its little Italian nurse. "And the boy," said Lavirotte, echoing her words, and touching the plump cheek of the child with the forefinger of his right hand.

CHAPTER XIX

It was decided in less than a year from the death of Dora Harrington, that the Scala had done all it could for Lavirotte. Eugene O'Donnell was to tarry still a month or so, and Lavirotte decided not to leave Milan until his friend was ready to go. During these twelve months Lavirotte had been studiously quiet. He had given all his attention to his business, and if there ever had been any weakness on his part towards Luigia, the death of Dora and his visit to London seemed to have put an end to it. Daily he had seen the O'Donnells. Daily he had shaken the hands of Eugene and Nellie. Daily he had seen their boy, and danced him in his arms, or played with him, or sung to him. He had said privately to Eugene: "Once upon a time, when I was mad, I was in love with your wife. Now I think I am in love with your boy. You know I am the last living member of my race. I am still a young man, it is true, but I shall never marry. My heart is in the grave with Dora. Still I cannot help feeling that I should like to leave behind me someone with my name. It was never a great name, as you know; yet once upon a time a Lavirotte did something, and if the blood were continued, it might do something again. But all is over now, and my race is at an end. All is over, and there will be no more of mine." To such speeches as these, O'Donnell had replied jestingly, saying: "You will be a widower twice before you die. Mind, I shall be godfather to your eldest boy." Lavirotte would simply shake his head sadly, and say: "Ay, you shall be godfather, if ever there is need of one." Then he would shake his head again, and sigh, and change the subject of conversation, as though it were distasteful to him. So the time slipped away, until at last it was decided that Eugene should leave. Neither he nor Lavirotte had by this time much money left, and each felt the necessity of procuring immediate employment. When they reached London they took lodgings in Percy Street, Fitzroy Square. It was pleasant to be back once more within the sound of the familiar tongue. Italy, with its blue skies and melodious language, was a thing "to dream of, not to see." Not as in the weird poem, a thing of terror, but a thing of joy in memory, rather than of joy in experience. For, Frenchman though Lavirotte was by descent and birth, he was now more familiar with the northern idiom, and all his thoughts were framed in that tongue. Both to him and O'Donnell it was a relief to cease translating. When they were at Milan, no matter how familiar the idea which presented itself, it had to be shifted from the accustomed words into other words. Now each could listen at leisure, and drink in meanings without effort, and communicate ideas with, as it were, the primitive effort of the mere tongue. Here was luxurious ease compared to toilful effort. Here was a privilege greater than all the consciousness of having overcome an unaccustomed dialect. To think as freely as one who thinks in dreams, and utter one's thoughts as unsuspiciously as the rudest peasant who has never contemplated the possibility of error in his speech, was a new luxury, an unexpected, a seemingly undeserved boon, presented every morning at waking, and not withdrawn when the curtains of the night were closed. It was pleasant to get back once more to the familiar living, the familiar cooking, even the familiar dulness of the atmosphere. The evenings were already getting short, and more than one fog had visited London that season. But although Eugene and Lavirotte found themselves once more in London, fully equipped for the ocean in which each meant to launch himself, to neither did it seem there was any immediate chance of employment; and, in fact, all arrangements had been made for the remainder of that season. Each found it necessary to practise the strictest economy. Lavirotte had still something left, and only that Eugene's father was able to spare, out of the little which remained to him from the wreck of his fortune, something for his son, Eugene, his wife and child might have known what absolute hunger was. Eugene had two rooms, and Lavirotte one. They did not live in the same house, but they met daily, Lavirotte coming to Eugene's place, and spending an hour or so in the evening with his friend. "I shall not be able to hold out," said Lavirotte on one occasion, "more than a couple or three months, if something doesn't turn up." "I should not have been able to hold out so long," said Eugene, "only that my father was able to lend me a hand." "It's weary work, waiting," said Lavirotte. "But still, I do not despair." "Not only do I not despair," said Eugene, "but I mean to succeed. Neither of us is a fool, and there are worse men, at our business, making a living in London. Why should we starve?" These were gallant words, but facts were hard upon the two. Lavirotte was the first to meet with a piece of luck. It was not much. In some remote kind of way, through Cassidy's agency, he was asked to sing at a concert in Islington, and got a guinea for the night. When the expenses of gloves and a cab were taken out of this guinea, very little remained as remuneration to the singer. But still it was better to do something than nothing, and Lavirotte was a few shillings less poor by the transaction. Although he had not even yet abandoned hope of getting a hundred pounds a night, he no longer thought it likely he would reach such an El Dorado soon. He would have been very glad to take ten pounds a night; ay, to take ten pounds a week. He would have been glad to take a pound a night. Eugene had told him that he, Eugene, would be glad to sing for nothing if he could only get an "appearance." Each assured the other that he was worth half-a-dozen of those in the ruck of singers. Each told the other, with perfect candour, he estimated his friend's value at not a penny less than fifty pounds a week. And yet each would there and then have been glad to sign an agreement at five pounds a week. Mr. John Cassidy had no longer any great interest in either of the pair. There was no longer anything to be found out about them. Cassidy was not, in grain, unprincipled or immoral. He did not love mischief for mischief sake. He was simply a feeble, crawling thing. He could not help crawling. But he felt very much pleased at being able to befriend Lavirotte. He owed no grudge to either man. In fact, he felt a certain kind of gratitude to Lavirotte for having once supplied him with a matter in which he took a deep interest. He was still employed at the railway; and the concert, in which Lavirotte sang, was one got up with a view to supplying means of presenting a testimonial to a superannuated servant of the company. There was, of course, no chance of a similar engagement coming Lavirotte's way. Eugene was present that night, and heard his friend sing. In all likelihood there never yet was a tenor absolutely free from jealousy, and Eugene felt he would like to be in Lavirotte's shoes, and he was certain he could have done at least as well as his friend. Nay, if the truth must be told, he was certain he could do better. Lavirotte, on his side, was haunted by an uneasy feeling of the same kind. His success was undoubted; but he knew very well that it was acquired by what Eugene would call noise. He got as much applause as the heart of man could desire. He got two "encores." He was congratulated by the secretary and treasurer to the fund, and at the supper which followed the concert, he sang the "Bay of Biscay" with tremendous power and effect. Eugene was at that supper also, and in response to the chairman's invitation, an invitation suggested by Lavirotte, he sang. Eugene sang "My pretty Jane;" and then, partly because Eugene's tender rendering of the ballad came upon those present as a surprise, and partly because Lavirotte's public performance had prepared them, and partly because Lavirotte's singing was so ill-proportioned to the room in which the supper was given that it hurt, almost, they did not encore Lavirotte, and they did encore Eugene. And then Eugene, with great discretion and modesty, sang no new song, but repeated the last stanza of "My pretty Jane," and sang it gentler than he had at first, singing as though it were a thing of no matter, no effort, as though he could not keep the melody back, but must, in good-humoured ease, let it float from him as a man lets pleasant talk float from him when he is in a careless mood. Then, when Eugene was done there was no tumult of applause. There was just only a murmur, which showed that men's hearts, and not their admiration, were stirred. Two men who were not near him came and shook hands with him silently. No one had shaken hands with Lavirotte. That night, Eugene O'Donnell told his wife that his song at that supper had been more successful than Lavirotte's. That night, Lavirotte told his heart the same story.