tenement halls cut like needles of ice and the lamps had to be lit at
two o'clock, the Lady in Brown Fur came unexpectedly. She had found work
for Luigi. She kissed the Little One, patted Vincenza's shoulder and
shook hands with Luigi. Again and again she made him repeat the name and
address to make sure he had it quite right. The Lady in Brown Fur was
very happy. When she went Vincenza leaned far over the banisters with
the lamp while Luigi called out in his soft, broken English, directions
for avoiding the lines of washing below and the refuse piled in dark
turns of the stairs. When the Lady in Brown Fur had disappeared Vincenza
turned to Luigi.
"Of a surety, cara, the saints are good. Never before didst thou work
before April. In the new house we will keep for ourselves two rooms.
"These people have the 'pull' even more than the alderman, Biaggio
says," replied Luigi with a dreamy look in his eyes. "It may be that
from this work I shall take three dollars each day."
"Madonna mia," gasped Vincenza, "it is beyond belief."
* * * * *
For five days Luigi stood four hours each afternoon, bent forward, to
the lifting of a cardboard block, while Hugh Keswick painted, as he had
not painted for months, the tense muscles under the olive skin, the
strong neck and shoulders. The Building of the Temple advanced rapidly.
And Luigi's arms and back ached so that each night Vincenza had to rub
them with the oil which now cost ten cents more in the shop of Biaggio.
On the Sixth day Luigi refused to go.
"I tell thee it is a stupidness--to stand all day with the pain in the
back. For what? Fifty cents. It is a work for old men and children----"
"But thou canst not make the money, sitting in thy chair, with thy feet
on the stove, like now----"
"Dost thou wish then that I have every night the knives in my back? If
so----"
"Not so, caro, but----"
"Listen. You understand nothing and talk as a woman. A lady comes to my
house. She says--you have no work, here is money. Then she comes and
says--here is work. But at this work I make not so much as before she
gave; and in addition, I have the pain in the back. Ecco, when she comes
again, I no longer have the work. It is her job to give away the money.
She is not a fool, that Lady in Brown Fur. It is that I make her a
kindness. Not so?"
"As thou sayest," and Vincenza went on with her endless washing.
But when the week passed and the Lady in Brown Fur did not come, Luigi's
forehead wrinkled with the effort to understand. When the second had
gone, Luigi was openly troubled. When the third was half over, he again
took his hat and went over to the shop of Biaggio.
As before Biaggio listened attentively, his eyes closed, until Luigi had
finished. Then he opened them, made a clicking noise with his tongue,
and laid one finger along the side of his nose.
"Holy Body of Christ," he said softly, "in business thou hast the head
like a rock. In one curl of thy Vincenza there is more sense than in all
thy great body. Did I not tell thee to be careful, and it would stop
only when thou didst wish. And now, without to ask my advice, you make
the stupidness, bah----"
"Ma, Dio mio," Luigi's hands made angry protest against the invective of
Biaggio, "I said only like a man of sense. It is her job, it make no
difference----"
"Blood of the Lamb! Thou hast been in America eight months, and thou
dost not know that they are mad, all quite mad, to work? Never do they
stop. Even after to have fifty years, think, fifty years, still they
work. They work even with the children old enough to keep them. For many
months The Skinny One, she who gives milk to the baby of Giacomo, had
the habit to find him such work, like the foolishness of your painter.
And Giacomo has already three children more than fifteen. Ma----"
Biaggio snorted his contempt. Then suddenly his manner changed. He
leaned back in his chair, and apparently dismissed the subject with a
wave of his fat hand.
"And the little Carolina she is well in this weather of the devil?" But
Luigi did not answer. He was thinking with a pucker between his black
eyes. Biaggio watched him narrowly. At last he spoke, looking fixedly at
the sausages above his head.
"Of course--it--is--possible--you have made a--mistake--but----"
Luigi leaned forward eagerly. "It is possible then to----"
"All things are possible," Biaggio nodded his head at the sausages,
blinking like a large, fat owl. Then he stopped.
"Perhaps, you will tell--to me," Luigi was forced to it at last.
Biaggio gave a little grunt as if he were being brought back from a deep
meditation. "There is a way," he said slowly. "If thou write to her of
the Brown Fur that thou art sick and cannot do the work----"
"But never in my life was I better. Only last week Giacomo said I have
grown fat. How the----"
"It is possible," replied Biaggio wearily, "to be sick of a sickness
that makes one neither thin nor white. With a sickness--of the legs like
the rheumatism, for example, one eats, one sleeps, only one cannot walk
or stand for many hours."
In spite of his efforts to the contrary, the wonder and admiration grew
deeper in Luigi's eyes. "Thou thinkest the----?"
"I am sure," now that Luigi was reduced to the proper state of humility
Biaggio gave up his attitude of distant oracle, and leaned close. "Thou
hast made a mistake, but it is not too late. If thou dost wish I will
write it for thee."
"If thou sayest," replied Luigi and now it was his turn to gaze at the
strings of garlic, "if you will do this favor."
"With pleasure," Biaggio's fat hands made little gestures of willingness
to oblige. "Of a truth it is not much, but when one wishes to buy the
house, and already the family is begun, two dollars and a half each
week----"
Luigi glanced at him sharply. "Two and----"
Biaggio drew the ink to him and dipped his pen. "Two and a half for
thee, and for me----"
"Bene, bene," Luigi interrupted quickly, "it is only just."
"Between friends," explained Biaggio as he began to write.
"Between friends," echoed Luigi, and added to himself, "closer than the
skin of a snake art thou--friend."
The Lady in the Brown Fur came next day. She had been very angry and
disappointed in Luigi, too angry and disappointed to go near him. Now
she felt very sorry and uncomfortable when she saw his right leg
stretched out before, so stiff that he could not bend it. He smiled and
made the motion of getting up, but could not do it, and sank back again
with a gesture of helplessness more eloquent than words. When the Lady
in Brown Fur had gone, Vincenza found an extra bill, brand new, tucked
into the pocket of the little Carolina.
Luigi waited until he was quite sure that Biaggio would be alone. There
was a look of real sorrow in his dark eyes as he slipped a shiny quarter
across the counter. "She left only two," he explained, "the reason I do
not know. Perhaps next time----"
"It is nothing, nothing between friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter
into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi.
But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes
were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns
quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time.
Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of oil, goes up--between
friends."
VIII
THE HAMMERPOND BURGLARY
The Story of an Artist
By H.G. WELLS
IT is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a
trade, or an art. For a trade the technique is scarcely rigid enough,
and its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary
element that qualifies triumphs. On the whole it seems to be most justly
ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated,
and of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner.
It was this informality of burglary that led to the regrettable
extinction of two promising beginners at Hammerpond Park.
The stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and
other personal _bric-a-brac_ belonging to the newly married Lady
Aveling. Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only
daughter of Mrs. Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to
Lord Aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and
quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to
be spent at Hammerpond. The announcement of these valuable prizes
created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which Mr. Teddy
Watkins was the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied
by a duly qualified assistant, he should visit the village of Hammerpond
in his professional capacity.
Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr. Watkins
determined to make his visit _incog_, and, after due consideration of
the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the role of a landscape
artist, and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant,
who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his
stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the
prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive,
the flint-built church, with its tall spire nestling under the down, is
one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods
and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are
singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call "bits."
So that Mr. Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a
brand-new easel, a paint-boy, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder
made in sections; (after the pattern of that lamented master, Charles
Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion
and some curiosity by half a dozen other brethren of the brush. It
rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it
inflicted upon him a considerable amount of aesthetic conversation for
which he was very imperfectly prepared.
"Have you exhibited very much?" said young Porson in the bar-parlor of
the "Coach and Horses," where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating
local information on the night of his arrival.
"Very little," said Mr. Watkins; "just a snack here and there."
"Academy?"
"In course. _And_ at the Crystal Palace."
"Did they hang you well?" said Porson.
"Don't rot," said Mr. Watkins; "I don't like it."
"I mean did they put you in a good place?"
"Whatyer mean?" said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. "One 'ud think you were
trying to make out I'd been put away."
Porson was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist, and he did not
know what being "put away" meant, but he thought it best to explain
that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed
a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a
little.
"Did you do figure work at all?"
"No, never had a head for figures," said Mr. Watkins. "My miss--Mrs.
Smith, I mean, does all that."
"She paints too!" said Porson. "That's rather jolly."
"Very," said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and,
feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added:
"I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight."
"Really!" said Porson. "That's rather a novel idea."
"Yes," said Mr. Watkins, "I thought it rather a good notion when it
occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night."
"What! You don't mean to paint in the open, by night?"
"I do, though."
"But how will you see your canvas?"
"Have a bloomin' cop's----" began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the
question, and then realizing this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another
glass of beer. "I'm goin' to have a thing called a dark lantern," he
said to Porson.
"But it's about new moon now," objected Porson. "There won't be any
moon."
"There'll be the house," said Watkins, "at any rate. I'm goin', you see,
to paint the house first and the moon afterward."
"Oh!" said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.
Toward sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very
considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant
pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his
apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was
observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a
study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson's
account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing
nocturnal art.
Mr. Watkins was mixing color with an air of great industry. Sant,
approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the color in question was
as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine.
Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to color from his earliest
years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first
glimpse of this brew. Mr. Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.
"What on earth are you going to do with that _beastly_ green?" said
Sant.
Mr. Watkins realized that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the
butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He looked
at Sant and hesitated.
"Pardon my rudeness," said Sant; "but, really, that green is altogether
too amazing. It came as a shock. What _do_ you mean to do with it?"
Mr. Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the
situation but decision. "If you come here interrupting my work," he
said, "I'm a-goin' to paint your face with it."
Sant retired, for he was a humorist and a peaceful man. Going down the
hill he met Porson and Wainwright. "Either that man is a genius or he is
a dangerous lunatic," said he. "Just go up and look at his green." And
he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant
anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and
the shedding of much green paint.
But to Porson and Wainwright Mr. Watkins was less aggressive, and
explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his
picture. It was, he admitted, in response to a remark, an absolutely new
method, invented by himself.
Twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared. The rooks amid
the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into
slumberous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its
architecture and became a dark gray outline, and then the windows of
the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and
here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow. Had any one approached the
easel in the park it would have been found deserted. One brief uncivil
word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. Mr. Watkins
was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined
him from the carriage-drive.
Mr. Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious
device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the
sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations. "That's the
dressing-room," he said to his assistant, "and, as soon as the maid
takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we'll call in. My! how
nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and with all
its windows and lights! Swop me, Jim, I almost wish I _was_ a
painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the
laundry?"
He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the
dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He
was too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim
was reconnoitring the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr. Watkins
in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Some one
had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He
heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond. Mr. Watkins, like all
true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his
folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He
was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied
that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In
another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery,
and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.
It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr. Watkins was
a loosely built man and in good training, and he gained hand over hand
upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but, as Mr.
Watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The
other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of
surprise. "It's not Jim," thought Mr. Watkins, and simultaneously the
stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkins's knees, and they were
forthwith grappling on the ground together. "Lend a hand, Bill," cried
the stranger, as the third man came up. And Bill did--two hands, in
fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had
apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. At any
rate, he did not join the trio.
Mr. Watkins's memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is
extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the
corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its
safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman
answering to the name of Bill to the ground by the hair. He was also
kicked in a great number of different places, and apparently by a vast
multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his knee
below Mr. Watkins's diaphragm and tried to curl him up upon it.
When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf,
and eight or ten men--the night was dark, and he was rather too confused
to count--standing around him, apparently waiting for him to recover. He
mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made
some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had not his
internal sensations disinclined him to speech.
He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a
flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little--it was
such unexpected kindness.
"He's a-comin' round," said a voice which he fancied he recognized as
belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.
"We've got 'em, sir, both of 'em," said the Hammerpond butler, the man
who had handed him the flask. "Thanks to _you_."
No one answered his remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to him.
"He's fair dazed," said a strange voice; "the villain's half-murdered
him."
Mr. Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better
grasp of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures round
him stood side by side with a dejected air, and there was something in
the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye
hands that were bound together. In a flash he rose to his position. He
emptied the little flask and staggered--obsequious hands assisting
him--to his feet. There was a sympathetic murmur.
"Shake hands, sir, shake hands," said one of the figures near him.
"Permit me to introduce myself. I am very greatly indebted to you. It
was the jewels of my wife, Lady Aveling, which attracted these
scoundrels to the house."
"Very glad to make your lordship's acquaintance," said Teddy Watkins.
"I presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped
down on them?"
"That's exactly how it happened," said Mr. Watkins.
"You should have waited till they got in at the window," said Lord
Aveling; "they would get it hotter if they had actually committed the
burglary. And it was lucky for you two of the policemen were out by the
gates, and followed up the three of you. I doubt if you could have
secured the two of them--though it was confoundedly plucky of you, all
the same."
"Yes, I ought to have thought of all that," said Mr. Watkins; "but one
can't think of everything."
"Certainly not," said Lord Aveling. "I am afraid they have mauled you a
little," he added. The party was now moving toward the house. "You walk
rather lame. May I offer you my arm?"
And instead of entering Hammerpond House by the dressing-room window,
Mr. Watkins entered it--slightly intoxicated, and inclined now to
cheerfulness again--on the arm of a real live peer, and by the front
door. "This," thought Mr. Watkins, "is burgling in style!" The
"scoundrels," seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere local amateurs
unknown to Mr. Watkins, and they were taken down into the pantry and
there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with loaded
guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed of
their removal to Hazelhurst police-station. Mr. Watkins was made much of
in the salon. They devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of a return
to the village that night. Lady Aveling was sure he was brilliantly
original, and said her idea of Turner was just such another rough,
half-inebriated, deep-eyed, brave, and clever man. Some one brought up a
remarkable little folding-ladder that had been picked up in the
shrubbery, and showed him how it was put together. They also described
how wires had been found in the shrubbery, evidently placed there to
trip up unwary pursuers. It was lucky he had escaped these snares. And
they showed him the jewels.
Mr. Watkins had the sense not to talk too much, and in any
conversational difficulty fell back on his internal pains. At last he
was seized with stiffness in the back and yawning. Everyone suddenly
awoke to the fact that it was a shame to keep him talking after his
affray, so he retired early to his room, the little red room next to
Lord Aveling's suite.
* * * * *
The dawn found a deserted easel bearing a canvas with a green
inscription, in the Hammerpond Park, and it found Hammerpond House in
commotion. But if the dawn found Mr. Teddy Watkins and the Aveling
diamonds, it did not communicate the information to the police.
IX
A FO'C'S'LE TRAGEDY
An Ancient Mariner's Yarn
By PERCY LONGHURST
"YEH may gas about torpedoes an' 'fernal machines an' such like, but yeh
can't learn me nothin'; onct I had t' do wi' suthin' o' th' sort that
turned th' heads o' a dozen men from black ter white in 'bout ten
minutes," and the ancient mariner looked at me with careful
impressiveness.
"Bad, eh?" I inquired.
"Sh'd think it was--for them poor chaps."
"Didn't turn your hair white, Uncle?"
"Gue-e-ss not," and the ancient mariner had a fit of chuckling that
nearly choked him.
When he recovered he told me the yarn. I had heard several of old
Steve's yarns, and I considered that his fine talents were miserably
wasted; he ought to have been a politician or a real estate agent. This
yarn, however, might very well have been true.
"It was 'bout nineteen years ago," Steve commenced, "an' I'd jest taken
up a job as cook on the _Here at Last_, a blamed old Noah's Ark of a
wind-jammer from New York to Jamaica. She did th' trip in 'bout th' same
time as yeh'd walk it. She was a beauty--an' th' crew 'bout fitted her.
Where th' old man had gathered 'em from th' Lord on'y knows; but they
was th' most difficult lot I've ever sailed with, which is sayin' a deal
consid'rin' that, man an' boy, I've been a sailor for forty years. They
was as contrairy as women, an' as stoopid as donkeys. I couldn't do
nothin' right for 'em. They complained of the coffee, grumbled at th'
biscuit, an' swore terrible at th' meat. But most of all they swore at
me."
"'It all lies in th' cookin',' an old one-eyed chap, named Barton, used
ter say. 'Any cook that is worth his salt can do wonders wi' th' worst
vittles'; an' he told me how he'd once sailed with a cook as c'd make a
stewed cat taste better'n a rabbit. An', durn me, when I went ashore
next, an' at great risk managed to lay holt of a big tom and cooked it
for em, hopin' to please 'em, an' went inter th' fo'c's'le arter dinner
an' told 'em what I'd done, ef that self-same chap, Barton, didn't hit
me over th' head wi' his tin can for tryin' ter poison 'em, as he said.
They complained to th' old man, too, which was worse; for when we got t'
th' next port my leave ashore was stopped, an' all for tryin' to please
'em. Rank ingratitood, I call it.
"Another time I tried to give the junk--it really was bad, but as I hadn't
bought th' stores, that wasn't no fault o' mine--a bit of a more
pleasant flavor by bilin' with it a packet o' spice I found in th'
skipper's cabin. One o' th' sailors comes into my galley in a towerin'
rage arter dinner.
"'Yer blamed rascal,' he said, an' there was suthin' like murder in his
starin' eyes. 'Yeh blamed rascal, whatcher been doin' ter our grub now?'
"'What's th' trouble, Joe?' I asks quietly.
"'Trouble, yeh skunk,' he howls; 'our throats is hot as hell, all th'
skin's comin' off 'em; Bill Tomson's got his lips that blistered he
can't hold his pipe between 'em. What yeh been doin?'
"'Hold hard a jiffy,' I said, an' looks at what was left o' th' spice
I'd used. I nearly had a fit.
"'Go 'way,' I says, pullin' myself together; ''t ain't nuthin'.'