Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/99

THE HILL OF DREAMS went purple when his name was mentioned, and the young Dixons sneered very merrily over the adventure.

'I always thought he was a beastly young ass,' said Edward Dixon, 'but I didn't think he'd chuck away his chances like that. Said he couldn't stand a bank! I hope he'll be able to stand bread and water. That's all those littery fellows get, I believe, except Tennyson and Mark Twain and those sort of people.'

Lucian of course sympathised with the unfortunate Bennett, but such judgments were after all only natural. The young man might have stayed in the bank and succeeded to his aunt's thousand a year, and everybody would have called him a very nice young fellow—'clever, too.' But he had deliberately chosen, as Edward Dixon had said, to chuck his chances away for the sake of literature; piety and a sense of the main chance had alike pointed the way to a delicate course of wheedling, to a little harmless practising on Miss Spurry's infirmities, to frequent compliances of a soothing nature, and the 'young ass' had been blind to the direction of one and the other. It seemed almost right that the vicar should moralise, that Edward Dixon should sneer, 89