Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with
underscores: _italics_. The Table of Contents was not present in
the original text and has been produced for the reader's convenience.
THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY
BY
WALTER BESANT AND JAMES RICE
NEW YORK
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
9 AND 11 EAST 16TH STREET
TO
_EDMUND YATES_,
EDITOR OF "THE WORLD,"
IN WHICH PAPER "THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY"
WAS FIRST PUBLISHED,
This Story
IS INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHORS.
PREFACE.
The Golden Butterfly, which gives a name to this novel, was seen by an
English traveller, two years ago, preserved as a curiosity in a mining
city near Sacramento, where it probably still remains. This curious
freak of Nature is not therefore an invention of our own. To the same
traveller--Mr. Edgar Besant--we are indebted for the description on
which is based our account of Empire City.
The striking of oil in Canada in the manner described by Gilead P.
Beck was accomplished--with the waste of millions of gallons of the
oil, for want of casks and buckets to receive it, and with the result
of a promise of almost boundless wealth--by a man named Shaw, some ten
years ago. Shaw speculated, we believe; lost his money, and died in
poverty.
Names of great living poets and writers have been used in this book in
connection with a supposed literary banquet. A critic has expressed
surprise that we have allowed Gilead Beck's failure to appreciate
Browning to stand as if it were our own. Is a writer of fiction to
stop the action of his story in order to explain that it is his
character's opinion and not his own, that he states? And it surely is
not asking too much to demand of a critic that he should consider
first of all the consistency of a character's actions or speeches.
Gilead Beck, a man of no education and little reading, but of
considerable shrewdness, finds Browning unintelligible and harsh. What
other verdict could be expected if the whole of Empire City in its
palmiest days had been canvassed?
Moreover, we have never, even from that great writer's most ardent
admirers, heard an opinion that he is either easy to read, or musical.
The compliments which Mr. Beck paid to the guests who honoured his
banquet are of course worded just as he delivered them.
Gilead Beck's experiences as an editor are taken--with a little
dressing--from the actual experiences of a living Canadian journalist.
From their Virginian home Jack Dunquerque and Phillis his wife send
greetings to those who have already followed their fortunes. She only
wishes us to add that Mr. Abraham Dyson was right, and that the Coping
Stone of every woman's education is Love. Most people know this, she
says, from reading: but she never did read; and the real happiness is
to find it out for yourself.
W. B.
J. R.
_March, 1877._
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.
PROLOGUE.
I.
"What do you think, chief?"
The speaker, who was leading by a half a length, turned in his saddle
and looked at his companion.
"Push on," growled the chief, who was a man of few words.
"If you were not so intolerably conceited about the value of your
words--hang it, man, you are not the Poet Laureate!--you might give
your reasons why we should not camp where we are. The sun will be down
in two hours; the way is long, the wind is cold, or will be soon. This
pilgrim has tightened his belt to stave off the gnawing at his
stomach; here is running water, here is wood, here is everything
calculated to charm the poetic mind even of Captain Ladds----"
"Road!" interrupted his fellow-traveller, pointing along the track
marked more by deep old wheel-ruts, grown over with grass, than by any
evidences of engineering skill. "Roads lead to places; places have
beds; beds are warmer than grass--no rattlesnakes in beds; miners in
hotels--amusing fellows, miners."
"If ever I go out again after buffaloes, or bear, or mountain-deer, or
any other game whatever which this great continent offers, with a
monosyllabic man, may I be condemned to another two months of buffalo
steak without Worcester sauce, such as I have had already; may I be
poisoned with bad Bourbon whisky; may I never again see the sweet
shady side of Pall Mall; may I----"
Here he stopped suddenly, for want of imagination to complete the
curse.
The first speaker was a young man of four and twenty--the age which is
to my sex what eighteen is to the other, because at four and twenty
youth and manhood meet. He of four and twenty is yet a youth, inasmuch
as women are still angels; every dinner is a feast, every man of
higher rank is a demigod, and every book is true. He is a man,
inasmuch as he has the firm step of manhood, he has passed through his
calf-love, he knows what claret means, and his heart is set upon the
things for which boys care nothing. He is a youth, because he can
still play a game of football and rejoice amazingly in a boat-race; he
is a man, because he knows that these things belong to the past, and
that to concern one's self seriously with athletics, when you can no
longer be an athlete in the games, is to put yourself on the level of
a rowing coach or the athletic critic of a sporting paper.
Being only four and twenty, the speaker was in high spirits. He was
also hungry. He was always both. What has life better to offer than a
continual flow of animal spirits and a perpetual appetite? He was a
tall, slight, and perhaps rather a weedy youth, a little too long of
leg, a little too narrow in the beam, a little spare about the
shoulders; but a youth of a ruddy and a cheerful countenance. To say
that the lines of his face were never set to gravity would be too
much, because I defy any man to laugh when he is sleeping, eating, or
drinking. At all other times this young man was ready to laugh without
stopping. Not a foolish cackle of idiotic vacuity such as may be heard
in Earlswood asylum or at a tea-party to meet the curate, but a
cheerful bubble of mirth and good-humour, proof that the spirit within
took everything joyously, seeing in every misadventure its humorous
side, and in every privation its absurdity.
The other who rode beside him was some years older at least. A man of
thirty-five, or perhaps more; a man with a hatchet-face--nose and
forehead in one straight line; long chin and long upper lip in
another; face red with health as well as bronzed with the sun--a good
honest face, supernaturally grave, grave beyond all understanding;
lips that were always tightly closed; eyes which sometimes sparkled in
response to some genial thought, or bubbled over at some joke of his
companion, but which, as a rule, were like gimlets for sternness, so
that strangers, especially stranger servants--the nigger of Jamaica,
the guileless Hindoo of his Indian station, and other members of the
inferior human brotherhood--trembled exceedingly when they met those
eyes. Captain Ladds was accordingly well served, as cold, reserved men
generally are. Mankind takes everything unknown _pro terribili_, for
something dreadful, and until we learn to know a man, and think we
know him, he is to be treated with the respect due to a possible
enemy. _Hostis_ means a stranger, and it is for strangers that we keep
our brickbats.
People who knew Ladds laughed at this reputation. They said the
gallant captain was a humbug; they pretended that he was as gentle as
a turtle-dove; beneath those keen eyes, they said, and behind that
sharp hatchet-face, lurked the most amiable of dispositions. At any
rate, Ladds was never known to thrash a native servant, or to swear
more than is becoming and needful at a syce, while his hatchet-face
had been more than once detected in the very act of looking as soft
and tender as a young mother's over her first-born. The name of this
cavalier was short and simple. It was Thomas Ladds. His intimate
friends called him Tommy.
They were in California, and were not buffalo-hunting now, because
there is not a buffalo within five hundred miles of Sacramento. Their
buffalo-hunting was over, having been accompanied by such small
hardships as have been already alluded to. They rode along a track
which was as much like a road as Richmond Park is like the Forest of
Arden. They were mounted on a pair of small nervous mustangs; their
saddles were the Mexican saddles used in the country, in front of
which was the never-failing horn. Round this was wound the horsehair
lariat, which serves the Western Nimrod for lassoing by day, and for
keeping off snakes at night, no snake having ever been known to cross
this barrier of bristly horsehair. You might as well expect a burgling
coolie, smeared with oil, and naked, to effect his escape by crawling
through a hedge of prickly pear. Also, because they were in a foreign
land, and wished to be in harmony with its institutions, they wore
immense steel spurs, inlaid with silver filigree, and furnished with
"lobs" attached to them, which jangled and danced to make melody, just
as if they formed part of an illustration to a Christmas book. Boots
of course, they wore, and the artistic instinct which, a year before,
had converted the younger man into a thing of beauty and a joy for the
whole Park in the afternoon, now impelled him to assume a _cummerbund_
of scarlet silk, with white-tasselled fringes, the like of which,
perhaps, had never before been seen on the back of a Californian
mustang. His companion was less ornate in his personal appearance.
Both men carried guns, and if a search had been made, a revolver would
have been found either hidden in the belt of each or carried _perdu_
in the trousers-pocket. In these days of Pacific Railways and
scampering Globe Trotters, one does not want to parade the revolver;
but there are dark places on the earth, from the traveller's as well
as from the missionary's point of view, where it would be well to have
both bowie and Derringer ready to hand. On the American continent the
wandering lamb sometimes has to lie down with the leopard, the
harmless gazelle to journey side by side with the cheetah, and the asp
may here and there pretend to play innocently over the hole of the
cockatrice.
Behind the leaders followed a little troop of three, consisting of one
English servant and two "greasers." The latter were dressed in plain
unpretending costume of flannel shirt, boots, and rough trousers.
Behind each hung his rifle. The English servant was dressed like his
master, but more so, his spurs being heavier, the pattern of his
check-shirt being larger, his saddle bigger; only for the silk
cummerbund he wore a leather strap, the last symbol of the honourable
condition of dependence. He rode in advance of the greasers, whom he
held in contempt, and some thirty yards behind the leaders. The
Mexicans rode in silence; smoking cigarettes perpetually. Sometimes
they looked to their guns, or they told a story, or one would sing a
snatch of a song in a low voice; mostly they were grave and
thoughtful, though what a greaser thinks about has never yet been
ascertained.
The country was so far in the Far West that the Sierra Nevada lay to
the east. It was a rich and beautiful country: there were park-like
tracts--supposing the park to be of a primitive and early
settlement-kind--stretching out to the left. These were dotted with
white oaks. To the right rose the sloping sides of a hill, which were
covered with the brush-wood called the chaparelle, in which grew the
manzanita and the scrub-oak, with an occasional cedar pine, not in the
least like the cedars of Lebanon and Clapham Common. Hanging about in
the jungle or stretching its arms along the side of the dry water
course which ran at the traveller's feet beside the road was the wild
vine loaded with its small and pretty grapes now ripe. Nature, in
inventing the wild grape, has been as generous as in her gift of the
sloe. It is a fruit of which an American once observed that it was
calculated to develop the generosity of a man's nature, "because," he
explained, "you would rather give it to your neighbour than eat it
yourself."
The travellers were low down on the western slopes of the Sierra; they
were in the midst of dales and glades--cañons and gulches, of perfect
loveliness, shut in by mountains which rose over and behind them like
friendly giants guarding a troop of sleeping maidens. Pelion was piled
on Ossa as peak after peak rose higher, all clad with pine and cedar,
receding farther and farther, till peaks became points, and ridges
became sharp edges.
It was autumn, and there were dry beds, which had in the spring been
rivulets flowing full and clear from the snowy sides of the higher
slopes; yet among them lingered the flowers of April upon the shrubs,
and the colours of the fading leaves mingled with the hues of the
autumn berries.
A sudden turn in the winding road brought the foremost riders upon a
change in the appearance of the country. Below them to the left
stretched a broad open space, where the ground had been not only
cleared of whatever jungle once grew upon it, but also turned over.
They looked upon the site of one of the earliest surface-mining
grounds. The shingle and gravel stood about in heaps; the gullies and
ditches formed by the miners ran up and down the face of the country
like the wrinkles in the cheek of a baby monkey; old pits, not deep
enough to kill, but warranted to maim and disable, lurked like
man-traps in the open; the old wooden aqueducts, run up by the miners
in the year '52, were still standing where they were abandoned by the
"pioneers;" here and there lay about old washing-pans, rusty and
broken, old cradles, and bits of rusty metal which had once belonged
to shovels. These relics and signs of bygone gatherings of men were
sufficiently dreary in themselves, but at intervals there stood the
ruins of a log-house, or a heap which had once been a cottage built of
mud. Palestine itself has no more striking picture of desolation and
wreck than a deserted surface-mine.
They drew rein and looked in silence. Presently they became aware of
the presence of life. Right in the foreground, about two hundred yards
before them, there advanced a procession of two. The leader of the
show, so to speak, was a man. He was running. He was running so hard,
that anybody could see his primary object was speed. After him, with
heavy stride, seeming to be in no kind of hurry, and yet covering the
ground at a much greater rate than the man, there came a bear--a real
old grisly. A bear who was "shadowing" the man and meant claws. A bear
who had an insult to avenge, and was resolved to go on with the affair
until he had avenged it. A bear, too, who had his enemy in the open,
where there was nothing to stop him, and no refuge for his victim but
the planks of a ruined log-house, could he find one.
Both men, without a word, got their rifles ready. The younger threw
the reins of his horse to his companion and dismounted.
Then he stood still and watched.
The most exhilarating thing in the whole world is allowed to be a
hunt. No greater pleasure in life than that of the Shekarry,
especially if he be after big game. On this occasion the keenness of
the sport was perhaps intensified to him who ran, by the reflection
that the customary position of things was reversed. No longer did he
hunt the bear; the bear hunted _him_. No longer did he warily follow
up the game; the game boldly followed _him_. No joyous sound of horns
cheered on the hunter: no shout, such as those which inspirit the fox
and put fresh vigour into the hare--not even the short eager bark of
the hounds, at the sound of which Reynard begins to think how many of
his hundred turns are left. It was a silent chase. The bear, who
represented in himself the field--men in scarlet, ladies, master,
pack, and everything--set to work in a cold unsympathetic way,
infinitely more distressing to a nervous creature than the cheerful
ringing of a whole field. To hunt in silence would be hard for any
man; to be hunted in silence is intolerable.
Grisly held his head down and wagged it from side to side, while his
great silent paws rapidly cleared the ground and lessened the
distance.
"Tommy," whispered the young fellow, "I can cover him now."
"Wait, Jack. Don't miss. Give Grisly two minutes more. Gad! how the
fellow scuds!"
Tommy, you see, obeyed the instinct of nature. He loved the hunt:
if not to hunt actively, to witness a hunt. It is the same feeling
which crowds the benches at a bullfight in Spain. It was the same
feeling which lit up the faces in the Coliseum when Hermann, formerly
of the Danube, prisoner, taken red-handed in revolt, and therefore
_moriturus_, performed with vigour, sympathy, and spirit the _rôle_ of
Actæon, ending, as we all know, in a splendid chase by bloodhounds;
after which the poor Teuton, maddened by his long flight and exhausted
by his desperate resistance, was torn to pieces, fighting to the end
with a rage past all acting. It is our modern pleasure to read of pain
and suffering. Those were the really pleasant days to the Roman ladies
when they actually witnessed living agony.
"Give Grisly two minutes," said Captain Ladds.
By this time the rest of the party had come up, and were watching the
movements of man and bear. In the plain stood the framework of a
ruined wooden house. Man made for log-house. Bear, without any
apparent effort, but just to show that he saw the dodge, and meant
that it should not succeed, put on a spurt, and the distance between
them lessened every moment. Fifty yards; forty yards. Man looked round
over his shoulder. The log-house was a good two hundred yards ahead.
He hesitated; seemed to stop for a moment. Bear diminished the space
by a good dozen yards--and then man doubled.
"Getting pumped," said Ladds the critical. Then he too dismounted, and
stood beside the younger man, giving the reins of both horses to one
of the Mexicans. "Mustn't let Grisly claw the poor devil," he
murmured.
"Let me bring him down, Tommy."
"Bring him down, young un."
The greasers looked on and laughed. It would have been to them a
pleasant termination to the "play" had Bruin clawed the man. Neither
hunter nor quarry saw the party clustered together on the rising
ground on which the track ran. Man saw nothing but the ground over
which he flew; bear saw nothing but man before him. The doubling
manoeuvre was, however, the one thing needed to bring Grisly within
easy reach. Faster flew the man, but it was the last flight of
despair; had the others been near enough they would have seen the cold
drops of agony standing on his forehead; they would have caught his
panting breath, they would have heard his muttered prayer.
"Let him have it!" growled Ladds.
It was time. Grisly, swinging along with leisurely step, rolling his
great head from side to side in time with the cadence of his
footfall--one roll to every half-dozen strides, like a fat German over
a _trois-temps_ waltz, suddenly lifted his face, and roared. Then
the man shrieked: then the bear stopped, and raised himself for a
moment, pawing in the air; then he dropped again, and rushed with
quickened step upon his foe; then--but then--ping! one shot. It has
struck Grisly in the shoulder; he stops with a roar.
"Good, young un!" said Ladds, bringing piece to shoulder. This time
Grisly roars no more. He rolls over. He is shot to the heart, and is
dead.
The other participator in this _chasse_ of two heard the crack of the
rifles. His senses were growing dazed with fear; he did not stop, he
ran on still, but with trembling knees and outstretched hands; and
when he came to a heap of shingle and sand--one of those left over
from the old surface-mines--he fell headlong on the pile with a cry,
and could not rise. The two who shot the bear ran across the
ground--he lay almost at their feet--to secure their prey. After them,
at a leisurely pace, strode John, the servant. The greasers stayed
behind and laughed.
"Grisly's dead," said Tommy, pulling out his knife. "Steak?"
"No; skin," cried the younger. "Let me take his skin. John, we will
have the beast skinned. You can get some steaks cut. Where is the
man?"
They found him lying on his face, unable to move.
"Now, old man," said the young fellow cheerfully, "might as well sit
up, you know, if you can't stand. Bruin's gone to the happy
hunting-grounds."
The man sat up, as desired, and tried to take a comprehensive view of
the position.
Jack handed him a flask, from which he took a long pull. Then he got
up, and somewhat ostentatiously began to smooth down the legs of his
trousers.
He was a thin man, about five and forty years of age; he wore an
irregular and patchy kind of beard, which flourished exceedingly on
certain square half-inches of chin and cheek, and was as thin as grass
at Aden on the intervening spaces. He had no boots; but a sort of
moccasins, the lightness of which enabled him to show his heels to the
bear for so long a time. His trousers might have been of a rough
tweed, or they might have been black cloth, because grease, many
drenchings, the buffeting of years, and the holes into which they were
worn, had long deprived them of their original colour and brilliancy.
Above the trousers he wore a tattered flannel shirt, the right arm of
which, nearly torn to pieces, revealed a tattooed limb, which was
strong although thin; the buttons had long ago vanished from the front
of the garment; thorns picturesquely replaced them. He wore a
red-cotton handkerchief round his neck, a round felt hat was on his
head; this, like the trousers, had lost its pristine colour, and by
dint of years and weather, its stiffness too. To prevent the hat from
flapping in his eyes, its possessor had pinned it up with thorns in
the front.
Necessity is the mother of invention: there is nothing morally wrong
in the use of thorns where other men use studs, diamond pins, and such
gauds; and the effect is picturesque. The stranger, in fact, was a law
unto himself. He had no coat; the rifle of Californian civilisation
was missing; there was no sign of knife or revolver; and the only
encumbrance, if that was any, to the lightness of his flight was a
small wooden box strapped round tightly, and hanging at his back by
means of a steel chain, grown a little rusty where it did not rub
against his neck and shoulders.
He sat up and winked involuntarily with both eyes. This was the effect
of present bewilderment and late fear.
Then he looked round him, after, as before explained, a few moments of
assiduous leg-smoothing, which, as stated above, looked ostentatious,
but was really only nervous agitation. Then he rose, and saw Grisly
lying in a heap a few yards off. He walked over with a grave face, and
looked at him.
When Henri Balafré, Duc de Guise, saw Coligny lying dead at his feet,
he is said--only it is a wicked lie--to have kicked the body of his
murdered father's enemy. When Henri III. of France, ten years later,
saw Balafré dead at his feet, he did kick the lifeless body, with a
wretched joke. The king was a cur. My American was not. He stood over
Bruin with a look in his eyes which betokened respect for fallen
greatness and sympathy with bad luck. Grisly would have been his
victor, but for the chance which brought him within reach of a
friendly rifle.
"A near thing," he said. "Since I've been in this doggoned country
I've had one or two near things, but this was the nearest."
The greasers stood round the body of the bear, and the English servant
was giving directions for skinning the beast.
"And which of you gentlemen," he went on with a nasal twang more
pronounced than before--perhaps with more emphasis on the word
"gentlemen" than was altogether required--"which of you gentlemen was
good enough to shoot the critter?"
The English servant, who was, like his master, Captain Ladds, a man of
few words, pointed to the young man, who stood close by with the other
leader of the expedition.
The man snatched from the jaws of death took off his shaky thorn-beset
felt, and solemnly held out his hand.
"Sir," he said, "I do not know your name, and you do not know mine. If
you did you would not be much happier, because it is not a striking
name. If you'll oblige me, sir, by touching that"--he meant his right
hand--"we shall be brothers. All that's mine shall be yours. I do not
ask you, sir, to reciprocate. All that's mine, sir, when I get
anything, shall be yours. At present, sir, there is nothing; but I've
Luck behind me. Shake hands, sir. Once a mouse helped a lion, sir.
It's in a book. I am the mouse, sir, and you are the lion. Sir, my
name is Gilead P. Beck."
The young man laughed and shook hands with him.
"I only fired the first shot," he explained. "My friend here----"
"No; first shot disabled--hunt finished then--Grisly out of the
running. Glad you're not clawed--unpleasant to be clawed. Young un did
it. No thanks. Tell us where we are."
Mr. Gilead P. Beck, catching the spirit of the situation, told them
where they were, approximately. "This," he said, "is Patrick's Camp;
at least, it was. The Pioneers of '49 could tell you a good deal about
Patrick's Camp. It was here that Patrick kept his store. In those old
days--they're gone now--if a man wanted to buy a blanket, that
article, sir, was put into one scale, and weighed down with gold-dust
in the other. Same with a pair of boots; same with a pound of raisins.
Patrick might have died rich, sir, but he didn't--none of the pioneers
did--so he died poor; and died in his boots, too, like most of the
lot."
"Not much left of the camp."
"No, sir, not much. The mine gave out. Then they moved up the hills,
where, I conclude, you gentlemen are on your way. Prospecting likely.
The new town, called Empire City, ought to be an hour or so up the
track. I was trying to find my way there when I met with old Grisly.
Perhaps if I had let him alone he would have let me alone. But I
blazed at him, and, sir, I missed him; then he shadowed me. And the
old rifle's gone at last."
"How long did the chase last?"
"I should say, sir, forty days and forty nights, or near about. And
you gentlemen air going to Empire City?"
"We are going anywhere. Perhaps, for the present, you had better join
us."
II.
Mr. Gilead P. Beck, partly recovered from the shock caused to his
nerves by the revengeful spirit of the bear, and in no way discomfited
by any sense of false shame as to his ragged appearance, marched
beside the two Englishmen. It was characteristic of his nationality
that he regarded the greasers with contempt, and that he joined the
two gentlemen as if he belonged to their grade and social rank. An
Englishman picked up in such rags and duds would have shrunk abashed
to the rear, or he would have apologised for his tattered condition,
or he would have begged for some garments--any garments--to replace
his own. Mr. Beck had no such feeling. He strode along with a swinging
slouch, which covered the ground as rapidly as the step of the horses.
The wind blew his rags about his long and lean figure as picturesquely
as if he were another Autolycus. He was as full of talk as that
worthy, and as lightsome of spirit, despite the solemn gravity of his
face. I once saw a poem--I think in the _Spectator_--on Artemus Ward,
in which the bard apostrophised the light-hearted merriment of the
Western American; a very fortunate thing to say, because the Western
American is externally a most serious person, never merry, never
witty, but always humorous. Mr. Beck was quite grave, though at the
moment as happy as that other grave and thoughtful person who has made
a name in the literature of humour--Panurge--when he escaped
half-roasted from the Turk's Serai.
"I ought," he said, "to sit down and cry, like the girl on the
prairie."
"Why ought you to cry?"
"I guess I ought to cry because I've lost my rifle and everything
except my Luck"--here he pulled at the steel chain--"in that darned
long stern chase."
"You can easily get a new rifle," said Jack.
"With dollars," interrupted Mr. Beck. "As for them, there's not a
dollar left--nary a red cent; only my Luck."
"And what is your Luck?"
"That," said Mr. Beck, "I will tell you by-and-by. Perhaps it's your
Luck, too, young boss," he added, thinking of a shot as fortunate to
himself as William Tell's was to his son.
He pulled the box attached to the steel chain round to the front, and
looked at it tenderly. It was safe, and he heaved a sigh.
The way wound up a valley--a road marked only, as has been said, by
deep ruts along its course. Behind the travellers the evening sun was
slowly sinking in the west; before them the peaks of the Sierra lifted
their heads, coloured purple in the evening light; and on either hand
rose the hill-sides, with their dark foliage in alternate "splashes"
of golden light and deepest shade.
It wanted but a quarter of an hour to sunset when Mr. Gilead P. Beck
pointed to a township which suddenly appeared, lying at their very
feet.
"Empire City, I reckon."
A good-sized town of wooden houses. They were all alike and of the
same build as that affected by the architects of doll's houses; that
is to say, they were of one story only, had a door in the middle, and
a window on either side. They were so small, also, that they looked
veritable dolls' houses.
There were one or two among them of more pretentious appearance, and
of several stories. These were the hotels, billiard-saloons, bars, and
gambling-houses.
"It's a place bound to advance, sir," said Mr. Beck proudly. "Empire
City, when I first saw it, which is two years ago, was only two years
old. It is only in our country that a great city springs up in a day.
Empire City will be the Chicago of the West."
"I see a city," said Captain Ladds; "can't see the people."
It was certainly curious. There was not a soul in the streets; there
was no smoke from the chimneys; there was neither carts nor horses;
there was not the least sign of occupation.
Mr. Gilead P. Beck whistled.
"All gone," he said. "Guess the city's busted up."
He pushed aside the brambles which grew over what had been a path
leading to the place, and hurried down. The others followed him, and
rode into the town.
It was deserted. The doors of the houses were open, and if you looked
in you might see the rough furniture which the late occupants
disdained to carry away with them. The two Englishmen dismounted, gave
their reins to the servants, and began to look about them.
The descendants of Og, king of Bashan, have left their houses in black
basalt, dotted about the lava-fields of the Hauran, to witness how
they lived. In the outposts of desert stations of the East, the Roman
soldiers have left their barracks and their baths, their jokes written
on the wall, and their names, to show how they passed away the weary
hours of garrison duty. So the miners who founded Empire City, and
deserted it _en masse_ when the gold gave out, left behind them marks
by which future explorers of the ruins should know what manner of men
once dwelt there. The billiard saloon stood open with swinging doors;
the table was still there, the balls lay about on the table and the
floor; the cues stood in the rack; the green cloth, mildewed, covered
the table.
"Tommy," said the younger, "we will have a game to-night."
The largest building in the place had been an hotel. It had two
stories, and was, like the rest of the houses, built of wood, with a
verandah along the front. The upper story looked as if it had been
recently inhabited; that is, the shutters were not dropping off the
hinges, nor were they flapping to and fro in the breeze.
But the town was deserted; the evening breeze blew chilly up its
vacant streets; life and sound had gone out of the place.
"I feel cold," said Jack, looking about him.
They went round to the back of the hotel. Old iron cog-wheels lay
rusting on the ground with remains of pumps. In the heart of the town
behind the hotel stretched an open space of ground covered with piles
of shingle and intersected with ditches.
Mr. Beck sat down and adjusted one of the thorns which served as a
temporary shirt-stud.
"Two years ago," he said, "there were ten thousand miners here; now
there isn't one. I thought we should find a choice hotel, with a
little monty or poker afterwards. Now no one left; nothing but a
Chinaman or two."
"How do you know there are Chinamen?"
"See those stones?"
He pointed to some great boulders, from three to six feet in diameter.
Some operation of a mystical kind had been performed upon them, for
they were jagged and chipped as if they had been filed and cut into
shape by a sculptor who had been once a dentist and still loved the
profession.
"The miners picked the bones of those rocks, but they never pick quite
clean. Then the Chinamen come and finish off. Gentlemen, it's a
special Providence that you picked me up. I don't altogether admire
the way in which that special Providence was played up to in the
matter of the bar; but a Christian without a revolver alone among
twenty Chinamen----"
He stopped and shrugged his shoulders.
"They'd have got my Luck," he concluded.
"Chief, I don't like it;" said the younger man. "It's ghostly. It's a
town of dead men. As soon as it is dark the ghosts will rise and walk
about--play billiards, I expect. What shall we do?"
"Hotel," growled the chief. "Sleep on floor--sit on chairs--eat off a
table."
They entered the hotel.
A most orderly bar: the glasses there; the bright-coloured bottles:
two or three casks of Bourbon whisky; the counter; the very dice on
the counter with which the bar-keeper used to "go" the miners for
drinks. How things at once so necessary to civilised life and so
portable as dice were left behind, it is impossible to explain.
Everything was there except the drink. The greasers tried the casks
and examined the bottles. Emptiness. A miner may leave behind him the
impedimenta, but the real necessaries of life--rifle, revolver, bowie,
and cards--he takes with him. And as for the drink, he carries that
away too for greater safety, inside himself.
The English servant looked round him and smiled superior.
"No tap for beer, as usual, sir," he said. "These poor Californians
has much to learn."
Mr. Gilead P. Beck looked round mournfully.
"Everything gone but the fixin's," he sighed. "There used to be good
beds, where there wasn't more'n two at once in them; and there used to
be such a crowd around this bar as you would not find nearer'n St.
Louis City."
"Hush!" said Jack, holding up his hand. There were steps.
Mr. Beck pricked up his ears.
"Chinamen, likely. If there's a row, gentlemen, give me something, if
it's only a toothpick, to chime in with. But that's not a Chinese
step; that's an Englishman's. He wears boots, but they are not miner's
boots; he walks firm and slow, like all Englishmen; he is not in a
hurry, like our folk. And who but an Englishman would be found staying
behind in the Empire City when it's gone to pot?"
The footsteps came down the stairs.
"Most unhandsome of a ghost," said the younger man, "to walk before
midnight."
The producer of the footsteps appeared.
"Told you he was an Englishman!" cried Mr. Beck.
Indeed, there was no mistaking the nationality of the man, in spite of
his dress, which was cosmopolitan. He wore boots, but not, as the
quick ear of the American told him, the great boots of the miner; he
had on a flannel shirt with a red silk belt; he wore a sort of blanket
thrown back from his shoulders; and he had a broad felt hat. Of course
he carried arms, but they were not visible.
He was a man of middle height, with clear blue eyes; the perfect
complexion of an Englishman of good stock and in complete health; a
brown beard, long and rather curly, streaked with here and there a
grey hair; square and clear-cut nostrils; and a mouth which, though
not much of it was visible, looked as if it would easily smile, might
readily become tender, and would certainly find it difficult to be
stern. He might be any age, from five and thirty to five and forty.
The greasers fell back and grouped about the door. The questions which
might be raised had no interest for them. The two leaders stood
together; and Mr. Gilead P. Beck, rolling an empty keg to their side,
turned it up and sat down with the air of a judge, looking from one
party to the other.
"Englishmen, I see," said the stranger.
"Ye-yes," said Ladds, not, as Mr. Beck expected, immediately holding
out his hand for the stranger to grasp.
"You have probably lost your way?"
"Been hunting. Working round--San Francisco. Followed track; accident;
got here. Your hotel, perhaps? Fine situation, but lonely."
"Not a ghost, then," murmured the other, with a look of temporary
disappointment.
"If you will come upstairs to my quarters, I may be able to make you
comfortable for the night. Your party will accommodate themselves
without our help."
He referred to the greasers, who had already begun their preparations
for spending a happy night. When he led the way up the stairs, he was
followed, not only by the two gentlemen he had invited, but also by
the ragamuffin hunter, miner, or adventurer, and by the valet, who
conceived it his duty to follow his master.
He lived, this hermit, in one of the small bed-rooms of the hotel,
which he had converted into a sitting-room. It contained a single
rocking-chair and a table. There was also a shelf, which served for a
sideboard, and a curtain under the shelf, which acted as a cupboard.
"You see my den," he said. "I came here a year or so ago by accident,
like yourselves. I found the place deserted. I liked the solitude, the
scenery, whatever you like, and I stayed here. You are the only
visitors I have had in a year."
"Chinamen?" said Mr. Gilead P. Beck.
"Well, Chinamen, of course. But only two of them. They take turns, at
forty dollars a month, to cook my dinners. And there is a half-caste,
who does not mind running down to Sacramento when I want anything. And
so, you see, I make out pretty well."
He opened the window, and blew a whistle.
In two minutes a Chinaman came tumbling up the stairs. His inscrutable
face expressed all the conflicting passions of humanity at
once--ambition, vanity, self respect, humour, satire, avarice,
resignation, patience, revenge, meekness, long-suffering, remembrance,
and a thousand others. No Aryan comes within a hundred miles of it.
"Dinner as soon as you can," said his master.
"Ayah! can do," replied the Celestial. "What time you wantchee?
"As soon as you can. Half an hour."
"Can do. My no have got cully-powder. Have makee finish. Have got?"
"Look for some; make Achow help."
"How can? No, b'long his pidgin. He no helpee. B'long my pidgin makee
cook chow-chow. Ayah! Achow have go makee cheat over Mexican man.
Makee play cards all same euchre."
In fact, on looking out of the window, the other Celestial was clearly
visible, manipulating a pack of cards and apparently inviting the
Mexicans to a friendly game, in which there could be no deception.
Then Ladds' conscience smote him.
"Beg pardon. Should have seen. Make remark about hotel. Apologise."
"He means," said the other, "that he was a terrible great fool not to
see that you are a gentleman."
Ladds nodded.
"Let me introduce our party," the speaker went on. "This is our
esteemed friend Mr. Gilead P. Beck, whom we caught in a bear-hunt----"
"Bar behind," said Mr. Beck.
"This is Captain Ladds, of the 35th Dragoons."
"Ladds," said Ladds. "Nibs, cocoa-nibs--pure aroma--best
breakfast-digester--blessing to mothers--perfect fragrance."
"His name is Ladds; and he wishes to communicate to you the fact that
he is the son of the man who made an immense fortune--immense, Tommy?"
Ladds nodded.
"By a crafty compound known as 'Ladds' Patent Anti-Dyspeptic Cocoa.'
This is Ladd's servant, John Boimer, the best servant who ever put his
leg across pig-skin; and my name is Roland Dunquerque. People
generally call me Jack; I don't know why, but they do."
Their host bowed to each, including the servant, who coloured with
pleasure at Jack's description of him; but he shook hands with Ladds.
"One of ours," he said. "My name is Lawrence Colquhoun. I sold out
before you joined. I came here as you see. And--now, gentlemen, I
think I hear the first sounds of dinner. Boimer--you will allow me,
Ladds?--you will find claret and champagne behind that curtain. Pardon
a hermit's fare. I think they have laid out such a table as the
wilderness can boast in the next room."
The dinner was not altogether what a man might order at the Junior
United, but it was good. There was venison, there was a curry, there
was some mountain quail, there was claret, and there was
champagne--both good, especially the claret. Then there was coffee.
The Honourable Roland Dunquerque, whom we will call in future, what
everybody always called him, Jack, ate and drank like Friar John. The
keen mountain air multiplied his normal twist by ten. Mr. Gilead P.
Beck, who sat down to dinner perfectly unabashed by his rags, was good
as a trencherman, but many plates behind the young Englishman. Mr.
Lawrence Colquhoun, their host, went on talking almost as if they were
in London, only now and then he found himself behind the world. It was
his ignorance of the last Derby, the allusion to an old and
half-forgotten story, perhaps his use of little phrases--not slang
phrases, but those delicately-shaded terms which imply knowledge of
current things--which showed him to have been out of London and Paris
for more than one season.
"Four years," he said, "since I left England."
"But you will come back to it again?"
"I think not."
"Better," said Jack, whose face was a little flushed with the wine.
"Much better. Robinson Crusoe always wanted to get home again. So did
Selkirk. So did Philip Quarles."
Then the host produced cigars. Later on, brandy-and-water.
The brandy and water made Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who found himself a good
deal crowded out of the conversation, insist on having his share. He
placed his square box on the table, and loosed the straps.
"Let me tell you," he said, "the story of my Luck. I was in Sonora
City," he began, patting his box affectionately, "after the worst
three months I ever had; and I went around trying to borrow a few
dollars. I got no dollars, but I got free drinks--so many free drinks,
that at last I lay down in the street and went to sleep. Wal,
gentlemen, I suppose I walked in that slumber of mine, for when I woke
up I was lying a mile outside the town.
"I also entertained angels unawares, for at my head there sat an
Indian woman. She was as wrinkled an old squaw as ever shrieked at a
buryin'. But she took an interest in me. She took that amount of
interest in me that she told me she knew of gold. And then she led me
by the hand, gentlemen, that aged and affectionate old squaw, to a
place not far from the roadside; and there, lying between two rocks,
and hidden in the chaparelle, glittering in the light, was this
bauble." He tapped his box. "I did not want to be told to take it. I
wrapped it in my handkerchief and carried it in my hand. Then she led
me back to the road again. 'Bad luck you will have,' she said; 'but it
will lead to good luck so long as that is not broken, sold, given
away, or lost.' Then she left me, and here it is."
He opened the little box. There was nothing to be seen but a mass of
white wool.
"Bad luck I _have_ had. Look at me, gentlemen. Adam was not more
destitute when the garden-gates were shut on him. But the good will
come, somehow."
He removed the wool, and, behold, a miracle of nature! Two thin plates
of gold delicately wrought in lines and curious chasing, like the
pattern of a butterfly's wing, and of the exact shape, but twice as
large. They were poised at the angle, always the same, at which the
insect balances itself about a flower. They were set in a small piece
of quaintly marked quartz, which represented the body.
"A golden butterfly!"
"A golden butterfly," said Mr. Beck. "No goldsmith made this
butterfly. It came from Nature's workshop. It is my Luck."
"And If the butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead Beck,"
said Jack.
"Thank you, sir. That's very neat. I'll take that, sir, if you will
allow me, for my motto, unless you want it for yourself."
"No," said Jack; "I have one already."
"If this golden butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck,"
repeated the owner of the insect. "If you are going on, gentlemen, to
San Francisco, I hope you will take me with you."
"Colquhoun," said Ladds, "you do not mean to stay by yourself? Much
better come with us, unless, of course----"
Lying on the table was a piece of an old newspaper in which Jack had
wrapped something. Ladds saw Colquhoun mechanically take up the paper,
read it, and change color. Then he looked straight before him, seeing
nothing, and Ladds stopped speaking. Then he smiled in a strange
far-off way.
"I think I will go with you," he said.
"Hear, hear!" cried Jack. "Selkirk returns to the sound of the
church-going bell."
Ladds refrained from looking at the paper in search of things which
did not concern himself, but he perceived that Colquhoun had, like
Hamlet, seen something. There _was_, in fact, an announcement in
the fragment which greatly interested Lawrence Colquhoun:
"On April 3, by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Turk's Island,
at St. George's Hanover Square, Gabriel Cassilis, of etc., to
Victoria, daughter of the Late Admiral Sir Benbow Pengelley,
K.C.B."
In the morning they started, Mr. Beck being provided with a new
rig-out of a rough and useful kind.
At the last moment one of the Chinamen, Leeching, the cook, besought
from his late master, as a parting favour and for the purpose of
self-protection, the gift of a pistol, powder, and ball.
Mr. Colquhoun gave them to him, thinking it a small thing after two
years of faithful service. Then Leeching, after loading his pistol,
went to work with his comrade for an hour or so.
Presently, Achow being on his knees in the shingle, the perfidious
Leeching suddenly cocked his pistol, and fired it into Achow's right
ear, so that he fell dead.
By this lucky accident Leeching became sole possessor of the little
pile of gold which he and the defunct Achow had scraped together and
placed in a _cache_.
He proceeded to unearth this treasure, put together his little
belongings, and started on the road to San Francisco with a smile of
satisfaction.
There was a place in the windings of the road where there was a steep
bank. By the worst luck in the world a stone slipped and fell as
Leeching passed by. The stone by itself, would not have mattered much,
as it did not fall on Leeching's head; but with it fell a rattlesnake,
who was sleeping in the warmth of the sun.
Nothing annoys a rattlesnake more than to be disturbed in his sleep.
With angry mind he awoke, looked around, and saw the Chinaman.
Illogically connecting him with the fall of the stone, he made for
him, and, before Leeching knew there was a rattlesnake anywhere near
him, bit him in the calf.
Leeching sat down on the bank and realized the position. Being a
fatalist, he did not murmur; having no conscience, he did not fear;
having no faith, he did not hope; having very little time, he made no
testamentary dispositions. In point of fact, he speedily curled up his
legs and died.
Then the deserted Empire City was deserted indeed, for there was not
even a Chinaman left in it.
CHAPTER I.
Joseph and His Brethren.
The largest and most solid of all the substantial houses in Carnarvon
Square, Bloomsbury, is Number Fifteen, which, by reason of its corner
position (Mulgrave Street intersecting it at right angles at this
point), has been enabled to stretch itself out at the back. It is a
house which a man who wanted to convey the idea of a solid income
without ostentation or attempt at fashion would find the very thing to
assist his purpose. The ladies of such a house would not desire to
belong to the world farther west; they would respect the Church, law,
and medicine; they would look on the City with favourable eyes when it
was represented by a partner in an old firm; they would have sound
notions of material comfort; they would read solid books, and would
take their pleasure calmly. One always, somehow, in looking at a house
wonders first of what sort its women are. There were, however, no
women at Number Fifteen at all, except the maids. Its occupants
consisted of three brothers, all unmarried. They were named
respectively Cornelius, Humphrey, and Joseph Jagenal. Cornelius and
Humphrey were twins. Joseph was their junior by ten years. Cornelius
and Humphrey were fifty--Joseph was forty. People who did not know
this thought that Joseph was fifty and his brethren forty.
When the Venerable the Archdeacon of Market Basing, the well-known
author of _Sermons on the Duty of Tithe-Offerings_, the _Lesbia of
Catullus_, and a _Treatise on the Right Use of the Anapæst in Greek
Iambic Verse_, died, it was found that he had bequeathed his little
savings, worth altogether about £500 a year, to his three sons in the
following proportions: the twins, he said, possessed genius; they
would make their mark in the world, but they must be protected. They
received the yearly sum of £200 apiece, and it was placed in the hands
of trustees to prevent their losing it; the younger was to have the
rest, without trustees, because, his father said, "Joseph is a dull
boy and will keep it." It was a wise distribution of the money.
Cornelius, then nineteen, left Oxford immediately, and went to
Heidelberg, where he called himself a poet, studied metaphysics, drank
beer, and learned to fence. Humphrey, for his part, deserted
Cambridge--their father having chosen that they should not be
rivals--and announced his intention of devoting his life to Art. He
took up his residence in Rome. Joseph stayed at school, having no
other choice. When the boy was sixteen, his guardians articled him to
a solicitor. Joseph was dull, but he was methodical, exact, and
endowed with a retentive memory. He had also an excellent manner, and
the "appearance of age," as port wine advertisers say, before he was
out of his articles. At twenty-five, Joseph Jagenal was a partner; at
thirty-five, he was the working partner; at forty, he was the senior
partner in the great Lincoln's-Inn firm of Shaw, Fairlight, and
Jagenal, the confidential advisers of as many respectable county
people as any firm in London.
When he was twenty-five, and became a partner, the brethren returned
to England simultaneously, and were good enough to live with him and
upon him. They had their £200 a year each, and expensive tastes.
Joseph, who had made a thousand for his share the first year of his
admission to the firm, had no expensive tastes, and a profound respect
for genius. He took in the twins joyfully, and they stayed with him.
When his senior partner died, and Mr. Fairlight retired, so that
Joseph's income was largely increased, they made him move from
Torrington Square, where the houses are small, to Carnarvon Square,
and regulated his household for him on the broadest and most liberal
scale. Needless to say, no part of the little income, which barely
served the twins with pocket-money and their _menus plaisirs_,
went towards the housekeeping. Cornelius, poet and philosopher,
superintended the dinner and daily interviewed the cook. Humphrey,
he devotee of art, who furnished the rooms according to the latest
designs of the most correct taste, was in command of the cellar.
Cornelius took the best sitting-room for himself, provided it with
books, easy-chairs, and an immense study-table with countless drawers.
He called it carelessly his Workshop. The room on the first floor
overlooking Mulgrave Street, and consequently with a north aspect, was
appropriated by Humphrey. He called it his Studio, and furnished it in
character, not forgetting the easy-chairs. Joseph had the back room
behind the dining-room for himself; it was not called a study or a
library, but Mr. Joseph's room. He sat in it alone every evening, at
work. There was also a drawing-room, but it was never used. They dined
together at half-past six: Cornelius sat at the head, and Humphrey at
the foot, Joseph at one side. Art and Intellect, thus happily met
together and housed under one roof, talked to each other. Joseph ate
his dinner in silence. Art held his glass to the light, and flashed
into enthusiasm over the matchless sparkle, the divine hues, the
incomparable radiance, of the wine. Intellect, with a sigh, as one who
regrets the loss of a sense, congratulated his brother on his vivid
passion for colour, and, taking another glass, discoursed on the
æsthetic aspects of a vintage wine. Joseph drank one glass of claret,
after which he retired to his den, and left the brethren to finish the
bottle. After dinner the twins sometimes went to the theatre, or they
repaired arm-in-arm to their club--the Renaissance, now past its prime
and a little fogyish; mostly they sat in the Studio or in the
Workshop, in two arm-chairs, with a table between them, smoked pipes,
and drank brandy and potash-water. They went to bed at any time they
felt sleepy--perhaps at twelve, and perhaps at three. Joseph went to
bed at half-past ten. The brethren generally breakfasted at eleven,
Joseph at eight. After breakfast, unless on rainy days, a uniform
custom was observed. Cornelius, poet and philosopher, went to the
window and looked out.
Humphrey, artist, and therefore a man of intuitive sympathies,
followed him. Then he patted Cornelius on the shoulder, and shook his
head.
"Brother, I know your thought. You want to drag me from my work; you
think it has been too much for me lately. You are too anxious about
me."
Cornelius smiled.
"Not on my own account too, Humphrey?"
"True--on your account. Let us go out at once, brother. Ah, why did
you choose so vast a subject?"
Cornelius was engaged--had been engaged for twenty years--upon an epic
poem, entitled the _Upheaving of Ælfred_. The school he belonged to
would not, of course, demean themselves by speaking of Alfred. To them
Edward was Eadward, Edgar was Eadgar, and old Canute was Knut. In the
same way Cicero became Kikero, Virgil was Vergil, and Socrates was
spelt, as by the illiterate bargee, with a _k_. So the French prigs of
the ante-Boileau period sought to make their trumpery pedantries pass
for current coin. So, too, Chapelain was in labour with the _Pucelle_
for thirty years; and when it came--But Cornelius Jagenal could not be
compared with Chapelain, because he had as yet brought forth nothing.
He sat with what he and his called "English" books all round him; in
other words, he had all the Anglo-Saxon literature on his shelves, and
was amassing, as he said, material.
Humphrey, on the other hand, was engaged on a painting, the
composition of which offered difficulties which, for nearly twenty
years, had proved insuperable. He was painting, he said, the "Birth of
the Renaissance." It was a subject which required a great outlay in
properties, Venetian glass, Italian jewelry, mediæval furniture,
copies of paintings--everything necessary to make this work a
masterpiece--he bought at Joseph's expense. Up to the present no one
had been allowed to see the first rough drawings.
"Where's Cæsar?" Humphrey would say, leading the way to the hall.
"Cæsar! Why, here he is. Cæsar must actually have heard us proposing
to go out."
Cornelius called the dog Kaysar, and he refused to answer to it; so
that conversation between him and Cornelius was impossible.
There never was a pair more attached to each other than these twin
brethren. They sallied forth each morning at twelve, arm-in-arm, with
an open and undisguised admiration for each other which was touching.
Before them marched Cæsar, who was of mastiff breed, leading the way.
Cornelius, the poet, was dressed with as much care as if he were still
a young man of five-and-twenty, in a semi-youthful and wholly-æsthetic
costume, in which only the general air, and not the colour, revealed
the man of delicate perceptions. Humphrey, the artist, greatly daring,
affected a warm brown velvet with a crimson-purple ribbon. Both
carried flowers. Cornelius had gloves; Humphrey a cigar. Cornelius was
smooth-faced, save for a light fringe on the upper lip. Humphrey wore
a heavy moustache and a full long silky beard of a delicately-shaded
brown, inclining when the sun shone upon it to a suspicion of auburn.
Both were of the same height, rather below the middle; they had
features so much alike that, but for the hair on the face of one, it
would have been difficult to distinguish between them. Both were thin,
pale of face, and both had, by some fatality, the end of their
delicately-carved noses slightly tipped with red. Perhaps this was due
to the daily and nightly brandy-and-water. And in the airy careless
carriage of the two men, their sunny faces and elastic tread, it was
impossible to suppose that they were fifty and Joseph only forty.
To be sure, Joseph was a heavy man, stout of build, broad in frame,
sturdy in the under-jaw; while his brothers were slight shadowy men.
And, to be sure, Joseph had worked all his life, while his brothers
never did a stroke. They were born to consume the fruits which Joseph
was born to cultivate.
Outside the house the poet heaved a heavy sigh, as if the weight of
the epic was for the moment off his mind. The artist looked round with
a critical eye on the lights and shadows of the great commonplace
square.
"Even in London," he murmured, "Nature is too strong for man. Did you
ever, my dear Cornelius, catch a more brilliant effect of sunshine
than that upon the lilac yonder?"
Time, end of April; season forward, lilacs on the point of bursting
into flower; sky dotted with swift-flying clouds, alternate
withdrawals and bursts of sunshine.
"I really must," said Humphrey, "try to fix that effect."
His brother took the arm of the artist and drew him gently away.
In front marched Cæsar.
Presently the poet looked round. They were out of the square by this
time.
"Where is Kaysar?" he said, with an air of surprise. "Surely, brother
Humphrey, the dog can't be in the Carnarvon Arms?"
"I'll go and see," said Humphrey, with alacrity.
He entered the bar of the tavern, and his brother waited outside.
After two or three minutes, the poet, as if tired of waiting, followed
the artist into the bar. He found him with a glass of brandy-and-water
cold.
"I had," he explained, "a feeling of faintness. Perhaps this spring
air is chilly. One cannot be too careful."
"Quite right," said the poet. "I almost think--yes, I really do
feel--ah! Thank you, my dear."
The girl, as if anticipating his wants, set before him a "four" of
brandy and the cold water. Perhaps she had seen the face before. As
for the dog, he was lying down with his head on his paws. Perhaps he
knew there would be no immediate necessity for moving.
They walked in the direction of the Park, arm-in-arm, affectionately.
It might have been a quarter of an hour after leaving the Carnarvon
Arms when the poet stopped and gasped--
"Humphrey, my dear brother, advise me. What would you do if you had a
sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside you?"
Humphrey replied promptly:
"If I had a sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside me, I should
take a small glass of brandy neat. Mind, no spoiling the effect with
water."
Cornelius looked at his brother with admiration.
"Such readiness of resource!" he murmured, pressing his arm.
"I think I see--ah, yes--Kaysar--he's gone in before us. The sagacity
of that dog is more remarkable than anything I ever read." He took his
small glass of brandy neat.
The artist, looking on, said he might as well have one at the same
time. Not, he added, that he felt any immediate want of the stimulant,
but he might; and at all times prevention is better than cure.
It was two o'clock when they returned to Carnarvon Square. They walked
arm-in-arm, with perhaps even a greater show of confiding affection
than had appeared at starting. There was the slightest possible lurch
in their walk, and both looked solemn and heavy with thought.
In the hall the artist looked at his watch.
"Pa--pasht two. Corneliush, Work----"
He marched to the Studio with a resolute air, and, arrived there, drew
an easy-chair before the fire, sat himself in it, and went fast
asleep.
The poet sought the workshop. On the table lay the portfolio of
papers, outside which was emblazoned on parchment, with dainty
scroll-work by the hands of his brother the artist, the title of his
poem:
The Upheaving of Ælfred:
AN EPIC IN TWENTY-FOUR CANTOS.
BY CORNELIUS JAGENAL.
He gazed at it fondly for a few minutes; vaguely took up a pen, as if
he intended to finish the work on the spot; and then with a sigh,
thought being to much for brain, he slipped into his arm-chair, put up
his feet, and was asleep in two minutes. At half-past five, one of the
maids--they kept no footman in Carnarvon Square--brought him tea.
"I have been dozing, have I, Jane?" he asked. "Very singular thing for
me to do."
We are but the creatures of habit. The brethren took the same walk
every day, made the same remarks, with an occasional variation, and
took the same morning drams; they spent the middle of the day in
sleep, they woke up for the afternoon tea, and they never failed to
call Jane's attention to the singularity of the fact that they had
been asleep. This day Jane lingered instead of going away when the tea
was finished.
"Did master tell you, sir," she asked, "that Miss Fleming was coming
to-day?"
It was an irritating thing that, although Cornelius ordered the dinner
and sat at the head of the table, although Humphrey was in sole
command of the wine-cellar, the servants always called Joseph the
master. Great is the authority of him who keeps the bag; the power of
the penniless twins was a shadowy and visionary thing.
The master had told his brothers that Miss Fleming would probably have
to come to the house, but no date was fixed.
"Miss Fleming came this afternoon, sir," said Jane, "with a French
maid. She's in Mr. Joseph's room now."
"Oh, tell Mr. Humphrey, Jane, and we will dress for dinner. Tell Mr.
Humphrey, also, that perhaps Miss Fleming would like a glass of
champagne to-day."
Jane told the artist.
"Always thoughtful," said Humphrey, with enthusiasm. "Cornelius is for
ever thinking of others' comfort. To be sure Miss Fleming shall have a
glass of champagne."
He brought up two bottles, such was his anxiety to give full
expression to his brother's wishes.
When the dinner-bell rang, the brethren emerged simultaneously from
their rooms, and descended the stairs together, arm-in-arm. Perhaps in
expectation of dinner, perhaps in anticipation of the champagne,
perhaps with pleasure at the prospect of meeting with Joseph's ward,
the faces of both were lit with a sunny smile, and their eyes with a
radiant light, which looked like the real and genuine enthusiasm of
humanity. It was a pity that Humphrey wore a beard, or that Cornelius
did not; otherwise it would have been difficult to distinguish between
this pair so much alike--these youthful twins of fifty, who almost
looked like five-and-twenty.