Locksley Hall

“ And those learned men were heirs to the age of the Crystal Palace, the age of the first "Locksley Hall," with its "parliament of man" and "federation of the world," the age that laid a railway line along the city moat of Amiens and opened capacious Hôtels de la Paix throughout Latin Europe, the age when passports withered and Baedeker was more and more, the age that in one of its supreme moments of ecstasy founded the London International College, an English public school (now naturally dead) in which the boys were to pass some of their terms among the heathen in Germany or France. ”

“ On the intellectual side, Locksley Hall presents social problems, and the Vision of Sin raises moral and religious difficulties similar, it is true, in essence to those which men had discussed in former days, but seen in the light of the poet’s own time. ”

“ The king’s vexation at this defeat of his party quickly changed into admiration of Locksley’s superior skill. He rode up to his side: ‘Wilt thou be one of my archers?’ he asked; ‘a hundred pounds a year, the free use of my pantry, and a new suit of livery each three months, shall be thy reward.’
“‘It grieves me, my liege,’ replied the yeoman, ‘that I cannot comply with thy request; but grant me one boon, and I and my gallant men will support thee to our deaths.’
“‘Name it, good Locksley; ’tis already granted;’ said the king. ”

“ Locksley in his wealth, which was believed to be enormous, and the young lady in her beauty, which was in truth very great. I used to hear that her lover was fond of comparing her to the Venus of Milo; and, indeed, if you can imagine the mutilated goddess with her full complement of limbs, dressed out by Madame de Crinoline, and engaged in small talk beneath the drawing-room chandelier, you may obtain a vague notion of Miss Josephine Leary. Locksley, you remember, was rather a short man, dark, and not particularly good-looking ”

“ The smell of the prison floated over the footlights and filled his nostrils. All his overwrought nerves quivering with repulsion, he broke through the crowd hemming him in against the partition, and rushed down into the street.
How long and whither he walked he did not know. At last he found himself within familiar latitudes, outside the Angel Tavern. He was wet through from the fine, penetrating rain, tired, cold, and utterly miserable. The revulsion of feeling in the music-hall had thrown him back years in his self-esteem. The soil of the gaol had never seemed so ineffaceable. ”

“ Then just as the last votes were being counted, an official attendant came in with a letter for Paul. It had been brought by messenger. The writing on the envelope was Jane's. He tore it open and read.
Mr. Finn is dying. He has had a stroke. The doctor says he can't live through the night. Come as soon as you can. JANE.
Outside the Town Hall the wide street was packed with people. Men surged up to the hollow square of police guarding the approach to the flight of steps and the great entrance door. Men swarmed about the electric standards above the heads of their fellows. ”

“ The philosopher must have known Dryden, both being early members of the Royal Society; but I have a fancy that Locke was a man who did not—save on rarest occasions—take a pipe and a mug at such a place as Will’s Coffee-house. His tastes led him more to banquets at Exeter House. There was foreign travel, also, in which he accomplished himself in continental languages and socialities; he had offers of diplomatic preferment, but his doubtful health (always making him what over-well people call a fussy man) forbade acceptance; else we might have had in him another Sir William Temple. ”

“ My advice is at your service, if it’s worth having, and you choose to trust a stranger.”
“O, I know you’re the right sort. We’ve made up our minds about that, big and little, down to the Janitory. But I don’t want to bother you.”
“Never mind! What is the trouble? Burglars? Or slow fire?”
“Why, you see, sir,” said Locksley, “I’m in considerable of a scare about that young painter up-stairs.”
He pointed to the centre-piece of the arabesqued ceiling. I looked up, almost expecting to see a pair of legs dangling through, according to my fancy of the afternoon. ”

“ By the time it was put in order and decorated, he declared, Unity would be in a fit condition to take up her abode there with Miss Lindon and himself.
“Where is this convalescent home you 're going to send her to?” asked Herold.
John did not know. A man could not attend to everything at once. But there were thousands. He would find one. Then, it being the end of the week, he went down to the Channel House, where, by the midnight train on Saturday, Herold joined him.
It was Herold who laid John's rash project before Sir Oliver and Lady Blount. ”

“ But him that's a mind for tryin' o't, 'll find himself when he's done, in the cellar beneath the ruined tower that's nearest the Hall, an' turnin', as one may call it, head to tail about, he'll be back again by the moat dungeon-door, down just under our feet Unless he likes to stop short by the deep black hole in the wall, which Master Lockit has it—and, as times go, he's a fair truthbider, though his tales are a'most as long as our cat's—Master Lockit has it, opens up into your father's sleeping chamber. But hark ye, Ruth, now don't you be telling young Lee about all that, mind ”

“ The hermit speedily unbolted his portal and admitted Locksley, with his two companions.
“Why, hermit,” was the yeoman’s first question as soon as he beheld the knight, “what boon companion hast thou here?”
“A brother of our order,” replied the friar, shaking his head; “we have been at our devotions all night.”
“He is a monk of the church militant,” answered Locksley; “and there be more of them abroad. I tell thee, friar, thou must lay down the vrosary and take up the vquarter-staff; we shall need every one of our merry men, whether clerk or layman. ”

“ Leaving matters in this extraordinary position in the house of Professor Lockerby we shall shift the scene, for [Pg 246] a moment, to the Countess Dowager of Wistonbury's sitting apartment in Oxton Hall; and we shall choose the moment when her favourite footman, Jacob Asterley, has entered her presence, after his return from a call at the post-office in the neighbouring village; the time being the second day after the occurrence just previously related—namely, the despatch to Oxton Hall of Professor Lockerby's letter. ”

“ Mr. Locket conceded after a moment. “When should I find you at home?”
“Don’t come,” said the young man. “I make you no offer.”
“I might make you one,” the editor hinted. “Don’t trouble yourself; I shall probably destroy them.” With this Peter Baron took his departure, waiting however just afterwards, in the street near the house, as if he had been looking out for a stray hansom, to which he would not have signalled had it appeared. He thought Mr. Locket might hurry after him, but Mr. Locket seemed to have other things to do, and Peter Baron returned on foot to Jersey Villas. ”

“ Locke could just make out the old man's form now as the other came through the door—and then in the darkness it was lost again. But the patter of footsteps ahead of him, hurrying along, served as a guide. He followed the other to the end of the hall, turned into the covered passageway, and was halted again by the old man, this time at the door of the aquarium.
"Tee-hee!" tittered the maniac. "They think they are dealing with a fool. Wait! ”

“ I was fresh from the French theatres, where three great blows behind the curtain announce its lifting.
“What!” thought I, “does the drama march? Is a new act beginning? Am I playing a part in the Denman trilogy? And what new character appears at midnight in the dusky halls of Chrysalis? Who follows Densdeth and Churm? Who precedes Emma Denman?”
I opened the door, wide and abruptly.
Locksley stood there, with fist uplifted to pound again. ”

“ Finn—4,765.
Again the wild cheering rose, and then the great double windows in the centre of the first floor of the Town Hall were flung open and Paul, surrounded by the mayor and officials, appeared.
Paul gripped the iron hand-rail and looked down upon the tumultuous scene, his ears deafened by the roar, his eyes dazed by the conflicting lights and the million swift reflections from moving faces and arms and hats and handkerchiefs. The man is not born who can receive unmoved a frenzied public ovation. ”

“ It was a large, ill-ventilated room, blue with cigarette and cigar smoke. Some thirty men were sitting or standing around a baccarat table in the centre, and two or three groups hung around ecarte tables in the corners. A personage who looked like a slightly more prosperous brother of the raven outside and wore a dinner-jacket, promenaded the room with the air of one in authority. He scrutinised us carefully from a distance; then advanced and greeted us politely.
“You have chosen an excellent evening,” said he. “There are a great many people, and the banks are large.” ”

“ Perhaps if a man did not sink lower than himself on some occasions, he could not rise higher than himself on others.
He drew a chair to the open French window. The room, being on the top storey, had no balcony, but a wrought-iron balustrade fixed on the outside of the jambs. He leant his arms over it and looked into the familiar street. He hated it. Geneva was intolerable. As soon as his father was able to travel, he would shake the dust of it from off his feet. A bantering letter had come that morning from his cousin, Mrs. Monteith, at Oxford. ”

“ Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind.”
Lockyer had begun life with half-a-crown, and by selling salop, or saloop, at Fleet-ditch, amassed sufficient to open the above place in Fleet Street, where he died worth £1000, in March 1739. [626]
Our old friend Pepys mentions going to China Hall, but gives no further particulars. It is not unlikely that this was the same place which, in the summer of 1777, was opened as a theatre. Whatever its use in former times, it was at that period the warehouse of a paper manufacturer. ”

“ The situation was rendered more extraordinary because the Liberal candidate made no appearance in the constituency. Paul inquired anxiously. No one had seen him. After lunch he drove alone to his father's house. The parlour-maid showed him into the hideously furnished and daub-hung dining-room. The Viennese horrors of plaster stags, gnomes and rabbits stared fatuously on the hearth. No fire was in the grate. Very soon Jane entered, tidy, almost matronly in buxom primness, her hair as faultless as if it had come out of a convoluted mould, her grave eyes full of light. ”

“ In the end Shaftesbury was committed to the Tower, tried and acquitted. More insurrectionary plots followed in the summer of 1682, after which, suspected at home, the versatile statesman escaped to Holland, and died at Amsterdam in January 1683. In these two years Locke was much at Oxford and in Somerset, for the later movements of Shaftesbury did not commend themselves to him. Yet the government had their eyes upon him. “John Locke lives a very cunning unintelligible life here,” Prideaux reported from Oxford in 1682. ”

“ Locke's reputation as a sportsman is meritoriously deserved. His straightforwardness has made him the central attraction of a host of enthusiasts. His love for sport is not begot of some slanting desire for financial aggrandisement; it is an unblended affection. Mr. Locke's latest triumphal achievement was his splendid victory at the elections to the House of Assembly for the Sussex constituency in 1897. It was fair that one who had been the champion of progressive movements in that district for a score of years should receive the support of the electors. ”

“ There was a rap at the door and a peremptory demand for entrance—a pause—and a whispered consultation outside.
"Open the door!" cried Locke, again.
As there was no answer, heavy blows were rained upon the door, and finally it gave way.
Three men stumbled into the room. They stared about, then started to search the place. One by one they started to cough. Locke, who was the farthest away from the brazier, seemed to be the least affected.
Finally he spied the note on the table and snatched it up. By the dim light he read:
You will never live to capture me. ”

“ It is intended that the Hall shall do its utmost to secure for its residents opportunities for religious and social work, and for the study of social problems, such as are possessed by the residents at Toynbee Hall or those at Oxford House. There will be a certain number of rooms in the Hall which can be used for social purposes, for lectures, for recreative and continuation classes and so on. Though the Hall itself is in one of the West Central Squares, it is surrounded on three sides by districts crowded with poor. ”

“ Locket. He showed his visitor the davenport and the hidden recess, and he smoked a cigarette, humming softly, with a sense of unwonted advantage and triumph, while the cautious editor sat silent and handled the papers. For all his caution Mr. Locket was unable to keep a warmer light out of his judicial eye as he said to Baron at last with sociable brevity—a tone that took many things for granted: “I’ll take them home with me—they require much attention.”
The young man looked at him a moment. “Do you think they’re genuine?” ”

“ He stared at it stupidly as long as he could see it. The light on the Clock Tower announced that the House was sitting. It was all curiously familiar, and yet he felt like an alien. There was not a soul in London to welcome his home-coming. His heart sank with the sense of loneliness. He was as infinitesimal and as isolated a unit in this seething, swarming ant-hill of humanity as amid the starry solitudes of the African veldt.
As chance willed it, he found the house in Pimlico in the same hands as before, and his old room in the attics vacant. ”