Here his meditations were interrupted. He had reached, in his progress down the street, a large plate-glass-windowed shop, the shop of a chemist, and of no less a man than Mr. James Hedger, Mayor of Market Denborough. The member of the lower branch of their common art was a richer man than he who belonged to the higher, and when Mr. Hedger was playfully charged with giving the young Doctor his medicines cheap, he never denied the accusation. Anyhow, the two were good friends, and the Mayor, who was surveying his dominions from his doorstep, broke in on Dr. Roberts' train of thought with a cheerful greeting.
"Have you heard the news?" he asked.
"No; I've no time for the news. I always look to you for it, Mr. Mayor."
"It mostly comes round to me, being a center, like," said the Mayor. "It's natural."
"Well, what is it this time?" asked the Doctor, calling up a show of interest. He did not care much for Denborough news.
"Littlehill's let," replied the Mayor.
Littlehill, the subject of Philip Hume's half-ironical description, was a good house, standing on rising ground about half a mile outside the town. It belonged, of course, to Mr. Delane, and had stood empty for more than a year. A tenant at Littlehill meant an increase of custom for the tradespeople, and perchance for the doctors. Hence the importance of the Mayor's piece of news.
"Indeed?" said Roberts. "Who's taken it?"
"Not much good – a young man, a bachelor," said the Mayor, shaking his head. Bachelors do not require, or anyhow do not take, many chemist's drugs. "Still, I hear he's well off, and p'r'aps he'll have people to stop with him."
"What's his name?"
"Some name like Bannister. He's from London."
"What's he coming here for?" asked Roberts, who, if he had been a well-to-do bachelor, would not have settled at Market Denborough.
"Why shouldn't he?" retorted the Mayor, who had never lived, or thought of living, anywhere else.
"Well, I shouldn't have thought he'd have found much to do. He wouldn't come in the summer for the hunting."
"Hunting? Not he! He's a literary gentleman – writes poetry and what not."
"Poetry? Why, it's not Dale Bannister, is it?"
"Ay, that's the name."
"Dale Bannister coming to Littlehill! That is an honor for the town!"
"An honor? What do you mean, sir?"
"Why, he's a famous man, Mr. Mayor. All London's talking of him."
"I never heard his name in my life before," said the Mayor.
"Oh, he's a genius. His poems are all the rage. You'll have to read them now."
"He's having a lot done up there," remarked the Mayor. "Johnstone's got the job. Mr. Bannister don't know as much about Johnstone as some of us."
"How should he?" said Roberts, smiling.
"Johnstone's buildin' 'im a room. It'll tumble down."
"Oh, come, Mr. Mayor, you're prejudiced."
"No man can say that of me, sir. But I knows – I know Johnstone, Doctor. That's where it is!"
"Well, I hope Johnstone's room won't fall on him. We can't spare Dale Bannister. Good-day, Mr. Mayor."
"Where are you goin'?"
"To Tom Steadman's."
"Is he bad again?" inquired the Mayor, with interest.
"Yes. He broke out last week, with the usual result."
"Broke out? Yes! He had two gallons of beer and a bottle o' gin off the 'Blue Lion' in one day, the landlord told me."
"They ought to go to prison for serving him."
"Well, well, a man drinks or he don't," said the Mayor tolerantly; "and if he does, he'll get it some'ow. Good-day, sir."
The Doctor completed his rounds, including the soothing of Tom Steadman's distempered imagination, and made his way home in quite a flutter of excitement. Hidden away in his study, underneath heavy medical works and voluminous medical journals, where the eye of patients could not reach, nor the devastations of them that tidy disturb, lay the two or three little volumes which held Dale Bannister's poems. The Doctor would not have admitted that the poems were purposely concealed, but he certainly did not display them ostentatiously, and he undoubtedly told his wife, with much decision, that he was sure they would not prove to her taste. Yet he himself almost worshiped them; all the untamed revolt, the recklessness of thought, the scorn of respectability, the scant regard to what the world called propriety, which he had nourished in his own heart in his youth, finding no expression for them, and from which the binding chains of fate seemed now forever to restrain his spirit, were in those three slim volumes. First came "The Clarion and other Poems," a very small book, published by a very small firm – published for the author, though the Doctor did not know this, and circulated at the expense of the same; then "Sluggards," from a larger firm, the source of some few guineas to Dale Bannister, of hundreds more if he had not sold his copyright; and lastly, "The Hypocrite's Heaven," quite a lengthy production, blazoning the name of the leading house of all the trade, and bearing in its train a wealth of gold, and praise, and fame for the author: yes, and of rebuke, remonstrance, blame, and hands uplifted in horror at so much vice united to so much genius. Praise and rebuke alike brought new bricks to build the pyramid of glory; and on the top of it, an object of abhorrence and of worship, stood the young poet, prodigally scattering songs, which, as one critic of position said of them, should never have been written, but being written, could never die. Certainly the coming of such a man to settle there was an event for Market Denborough; it was a glorious chance for the poet's silent, secret disciple. He would see the man; he might speak with him; if fortune willed, his name might yet be known, for no merit of his, but as that of Dale Bannister's friend.
Women have very often, and the best of women most often, a provoking sedateness of mind. Mrs. Roberts had never read the poems. True, but she had, of course, read about them, and about their author, and about their certain immortality; yet she was distinctly more interested in the tidings of Tom Steadman, a wretched dipsomaniac, than in the unparalleled news about Dale Bannister. In her heart she thought the Doctor a cleverer, as she had no doubt he was a better, man than the poet, and the nearest approach she made to grasping the real significance of the situation was when she remarked:
"It will be nice for him to find one man, at all events, who can appreciate him."
The Doctor smiled; he was pleased – who would not be? – that his wife should think first of the pleasure Dale Bannister would find in his society. It was absurd, but it was charming of her, and as she sat on the edge of his chair, he put his arm round his waist and said:
"I beat him in one thing, anyhow."
"What's that, Jim?"
"My wife. He has no wife like mine."
"Has he a wife at all?" asked Mrs. Roberts, with increased interest. A wife was another matter.
"I believe not, but if he had – "
"Don't be silly. Did you leave Tom quiet?"
"Hang Tom! he deserves