first-rate West End tailor, with money in his purse, having taken anxious
thought for the morrow, and having some useful friends and good
prospects; in such a case he might have held his head high in a
gentlemanly and Christian community. As it was he had usually avoided the
reproachful glance of his fellows, feeling that he deserved their
condemnation. But he had cherished for a long time his romantic
sentimentalities about women; literary conventions borrowed from the
minor poets and pseudo-medievalists, or so he thought afterwards. But,
fresh from school, wearied a little with the perpetual society of
barbarian though worthy boys, he had in his soul a charming image of
womanhood, before which he worshipped with mingled passion and devotion.
It was a nude figure, perhaps, but the shining arms were to be wound
about the neck of a vanquished knight; there was rest for the head of a
wounded lover; the hands were stretched forth to do works of pity, and
the smiling lips were to murmur not love alone, but consolation in
defeat. Here was the refuge for a broken heart; here the scorn of men
would but make tenderness increase; here was all pity and all charity
with loving-kindness. It was a delightful picture, conceived in the "come
rest on this bosom," and "a ministering angel thou" manner, with touches
of allurement that made devotion all the sweeter. He soon found that he
had idealized a little; in the affair of young Bennett, while the men
were contemptuous the women were virulent. He had been rather fond of
Agatha Gervase, and she, so other ladies said, had "set her cap" at him.
Now, when he rebelled, and lost the goodwill of his aunt, dear Miss
Spurry, Agatha insulted him with all conceivable rapidity. "After all,
Mr. Bennett," she said, "you will be nothing better than a beggar; now,
will you? You mustn't think me cruel, but I can't help speaking the
truth. _Write books!_" Her expression filled up the incomplete sentence;
she waggled with indignant emotion. These passages came to Lucian's ears,
and indeed the Gervases boasted of "how well poor Agatha had behaved."