Of these he was busily making a surreptitious fair copy one morning,
when old Mr. Septimus Lingard suddenly visited his seclusion, with the
announcement that his task there was at an end, so that he might now
return to his regular office. Though, of course, Henry had realised that
the present happy arrangement could not go on for ever, the news brought
temporary desolation to the two young lovers. For four months their days
had been spent within a few yards of each other; and though Angel's
excursions up the yard to Henry's desk could not be many, or long, each
day, yet each was conscious that the other was near at hand. When Angel
sang at her housework, it was from the secure sense that Henry was close
by. Their separation was little more than that of a husband and wife
working in different rooms of the same house. But now their meetings
would have to be arranged out somewhere in a cold world, little
considerate of the convenience of lovers, and, for whole days of warm
proximity, they would have to exchange occasional snatched
precarious hours.
Well, the only thing to do was for Henry to work away at their dream of
a home together--home together, however little, just four walls to love
each other in, away from the gaze of prying eyes, none daring to make
them afraid. How that home was to be compassed was far from clear in
either of their minds; but vaguely it was felt that it would be brought
about by the powerful enchantments of literature. Henry had recently had
one of Angel's poems accepted by a rather good magazine, and the trance
of joy in which for fully two hours he had sat gazing at that, his
first, proof-sheet, was hardly less rapturous than that into which he
had fallen after seeing Angel for the first time,--so dear are the
emblems of his craft to the artist, at the beginning, and still at the
end, of his career.
So Henry had to finish the fair copy of his poems at home in his
lodgings of an evening, for so ambitious a private enterprise could not
be carried on in his own office without perilous interruptions. He was
making the copy with especial care, in the form of a real book; and when
it was made, he daintily bound it in vellum with his own hands. Then he
wrapped it lovingly in tissue paper, and kept it by him two or three
days, in readiness for Angel's birthday, on the morning of which day he
hid it in a box of flowers and sent it to Angel. The sympathetic reader
can imagine her delight, as she discovered among the flowers a dainty
little white volume, bearing the title-page, "The Book of Angelica, by
Henry Mesurier. Tyre, 1886. Edition limited to one copy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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