Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/29

 of the commonest necessaries of life, and were visited at the same time by fire, famine, and pestilence. Daniel Manin did his work well. He defended the city against the Austrians, but he did not forget the city birds. They were in a measure bequeathed to him by the Doges, his predecessors, and the people ate porridge while the pigeons (in prime condition to be killed) were flying about the streets. Honour to Daniel Manin! His body lies in the cathedral, but the pigeons of St. Mark have made a dovecot of his prison bars, and prefer it (or seem to prefer it) to the Bridge of Sighs. So say the people of Venice. And a wild song, sung by the boatmen of the Molo, declares that the spirit of Daniel Manin is flying about the Lagunes to this day, in the shape of a beautiful white dove.  

 

, Monday, August the First.—Another day of agony and of acting. Soon all must be stopped. It cannot go on. Here is my last day of absence from the bank, and I am not one bit better. They have been only too indulgent. But what can they do? They must have their work done, and already they are complaining up in the London office. A hundred and fifty pounds a year, and that darling of mine, Dora—the children—all depending on me. If I lost this situation, what would become of us? And yet I must. My fingers can scarcely feel the pen, and the trembling characters swim before my eyes as I write on; the paper seems to rise up like waves of a huge white sea and suffuse my pupils. What am I to do? There, my darling has just gone out with the usual question, "How do you feel now, dear? You are stronger after this rest, are you not?" And I falsely say "Yes!" How can I pain her, she suffers more than I do. O, what folly and infatuation to have brought her into this state of life! I should have stood by and let her marry that man, who would have, at least, maintained her in comfort; but my own selfishness would not let me. He might have turned out a good husband. Though he was not a good man, she must have made him one. But my selfishness must sacrifice her to myself. Like us all! There! I open a book—a favourite one of mine—Holy Living and Dying, and read a sentence; up rises the page to my eyes like a great wave of foam; a faint buzzing begins in my ears and swells into the roar of a great sea. What does all this mean? What can be coming? God preserve my senses! or can this be a punishment that I have deserved? Yet the doctor proceeds with his cant, "A little rest is all that is wanted—you must give up work." How smoothly they say these things—so complacently. And pray will you, sir, feed her, feed them, pay the rent? No! so far from that, his eye is wandering to her gentle delicate little fingers, which, by that divine Aladdin's Lamp a dear devoted girl contrives to find, have got hold of what will satisfy him. We men can find for ourselves readily enough, but they find for others. There—there I must stop.

That cruel fellow, Maxwell, the manager, has been twice here in these three days. A cold, hard, cruel man. He said, he supposes I am suffering, as I say so, but really he cannot see what is wrong with me. With difficulty restraining myself, I ask him, Did he suppose I was counterfeiting, or that the doctor was counterfeiting? He answers in his insolent way, that what he supposed privately did not bear on the matter; the question was how the bank was to get its work done. I must see that they could not go on paying high salaries to invalids. He had his duty to the board and shareholders. I was either very sick, or only a little sick. If the former I had better resign, if the latter I had better return to my work. He really could give me no longer than to-morrow at furthest.

Poor Dora shrinks from this cruel sentence as if she were standing in the dock with a child in her arms.

"Oh, Mr. Maxwell," she cries, "you will not be so cruel!" He gave her a savage look.

"That is the word they have for me through the town. Mr. Maxwell, the hard man—a griping, cruel man. I do my duty, my good Mrs. Austen, and let every one else whether they are ladies and gentlemen or no, do theirs."

That was our crime. He never forgave that. He had once swept the bank offices, so the story went. He had no religion but money and figures. He had never been seen once in a place of worship, and one of the clerks saw a cheap translation of the infidel Renan on his table. Yet whatever he does to us I can pray for him to an indulgent Lord, and I shall get Dora to do the same. There again, I must stop. This agitation makes me forget for a few seconds that I can't write. 