'Yes, I guess that Pappa _was_ reckoned considerable of a crank. A great
educational reformer, and a progressive Democratic stalwart, _that_ is
the kind of hair-pin Pappa was! But it is awkward for me, some.'
These remarks, though of an obsolete and exaggerated transatlantic idiom,
were murmured in the softest of tones, in the most English of silken
accents, by the most beautiful of young ladies. She occupied the
client's chair in Merton's office, and, as she sat there and smiled,
Merton acknowledged to himself that he had never met a client so charming
and so perplexing.
Miss McCabe had been educated, as Merton knew, at an aristocratic Irish
convent in Paris, a sanctuary of old names and old creeds. This was the
plan of her late father (spoken of by her as Pappa), an educational
reformer of eccentric ideas, who, though of ancient (indeed royal) Irish
descent, was of American birth. The young lady had thus acquired abroad,
much against her will, that kind of English accent which some of her
countrywomen reckon 'affected.' But her intense patriotism had induced
her to study, in the works of American humourists, and to reproduce in
her discourse, the flowers of speech of which a specimen has been
presented. The national accent was beyond her, but at least she could be
true to what she (erroneously) believed to be the national idiom.
'Your case is peculiar,' said Merton thoughtfully, 'and scarcely within
our province. As a rule our clients are the parents, guardians, or
children of persons entangled in undesirable engagements. But you, I
understand, are dissatisfied with the matrimonial conditions imposed by
the will of the late Mr. McCabe?'
'I want to take my own pick out of the crowd--' said Miss McCabe.
'I can readily understand,' said Merton, bowing, 'that the throng of
wooers is enormous,' and he vaguely thought of Penelope.
'The scheme will be popular. It will hit our people right where they
live,' said Miss McCabe, not appropriating the compliment. 'You see
Pappa struck ile early, and struck it often. He was what our Howells
calls a "multimillionaire," and I'm his only daughter. Pappa loved _me_,
but he loved the people better. Guess Pappa was not mean, not worth a
cent. He was a white man!'
Miss McCabe, with a glow of lovely enthusiasm, contemplated the
unprecedented whiteness of the paternal character.
'"What the people want," Pappa used to say, "is education. They want it
short, and they want it striking." That was why he laid out five
millions on his celebrated Museum of Freaks, with a staff of competent
professors and lecturers. "The McCabe Museum of Natural Varieties,
lectures and all, is open gratuitously to the citizens of our Republic,
and to intelligent foreigners." That was how Pappa put it. _I_ say that
he dead-headed creation!'
'Truly Republican munificence,' said Merton, 'worthy of your great
country.'
'Well, I should smile,' said Miss McCabe.
'But--excuse my insular ignorance--I do not exactly understand how a
museum of freaks, admirably organised as no doubt it is, contributes to
the cause of popular education.'
'You have museums even in London?' asked Miss McCabe.
Merton assented.
'Are they not educational?'
'The British Museum is mainly used by the children of the poor, as a
place where they play a kind of subdued hide-and-seek,' said Merton.
'That's because they are not interested in tinned Egyptian corpses and
broken Greek statuary ware,' answered the fair Republican. 'Now, Mr.
Merton, did you ever see or hear of a _popular_ museum, a museum that the
People would give its cents to see?'
'I have heard of Mr. Barnum's museum,' said Merton.
'That's the idea: it is right there,' said Miss McCabe. 'But old man
Barnum was not scientific. He saw what our people wanted, but he did not
see, Pappa said, how to educate them through their natural instincts.
Barnum's mermaid was not genuine business. It confused the popular mind,
and fostered superstition--and got found out. The result was scepticism,
both religious and scientific. Now, Pappa used to argue, the lives of
our citizens are monotonous. They see yellow dogs, say, but each yellow
dog has only one tail. They see men and women, but almost all of them
have only one head: and even a hand with six fingers is not common. This
is why the popular mind runs into grooves. This causes what they call
"the dead level of democracy." Even our men of genius, Pappa allowed
(for he was a very fair-minded man), do not go ahead of the European
ticket, but rather the reverse. Your Tennyson has the inner tracks of
our Longfellow: your Thackeray gives our Bertha Runkle his dust. The
papers called Pappa unpatriotic, and a bad American. But he was _not_:
he was a white man. When he saw his country's faults he put his finger
on them, right there, and tried to cure them.'
'A noble policy,' murmured Merton.
Miss McCabe was really so pretty and unusual, that he did not care how
long she was in coming to the point.
'Well, Pappa argued that there was more genius, or had been since the
Declaration of Independence, even in England, than in the States. "And
why?" he asked. "Why, because they have more _variety_ in England.
Things are not all on one level there--"'
'Our dogs have only one tail apiece,' said Merton, 'in spite of the
proverb "_as proud as a dog with two_ _tails_," and a plurality of heads
is unusual even among British subjects.'
'Yes,' answered Miss McCabe, 'but you have varieties among yourselves.
You have a King and a Queen; and your peerage is rich in differentiated
species. A Baronet is not a Marquis, nor is a Duke an Earl.'
'He may be both,' said Merton, but Miss McCabe continued to expose the
parental philosophy.
'Now Pappa would not hear of aristocratic distinctions in our country. He
was a Hail Columbia man, on the Democratic ticket. But _something_ is
wanted, he said, to get us out of grooves, and break the monotony. That
something, said Pappa, Nature has mercifully provided in Freaks. The
citizens feel this, unconsciously: that's why they spend their money at
Barnum's. But Barnum was not scientific, and Barnum was not straight
about his mermaid. So Pappa founded his Museum of Natural Varieties, all
of them honest Injun. Here the lecturers show off the freaks, and
explain how Nature works them, and how she can always see them and go one
better. We have the biggest gold nugget and the weeniest cunning least
gold nugget; the biggest diamond and the smallest diamond; the tallest
man and the smallest man; the whitest negro and the yellowest red man in
the world. We have the most eccentric beasts, and the queerest fishes,
and everything is explained by lecturers of world-wide reputation, on the
principles of evolution, as copyrighted by our Asa Gray and our Agassiz.
_That_ is what Pappa called popular education, and it hits our citizens
right where they live.'
Miss McCabe paused, in a flush of filial and patriotic enthusiasm. Merton
inwardly thought that among the queerest fishes the late Mr. McCabe must
have been pre-eminent. But what he said was, 'The scheme is most
original. Our educationists (to employ a term which they do not
disdain), such as Mr. Herbert Spencer, Sir Joshua Fitch, and others, have
I thought out nothing like this. Our capitalists never endow education
on this more than imperial scale.'
'Guess they are scaly varmints!' interposed Miss McCabe.
Merton bowed his acquiescence in the sentiment.
'But,' he went on, 'I still do not quite understand how your own
prospects in life are affected by Mr. McCabe's most original and, I hope,
promising experiment?'
'Pappa loved me, but he loved his country better, and taught me to adore
her, and be ready for any sacrifice.' Miss McCabe looked straight at
Merton, like an Iphigenia blended with a Joan of Arc.
'I do sincerely trust that no sacrifice is necessary,' said Merton. 'The
circumstances do not call for so--unexampled a victim.'
'I am to be Lady Principal of the museum when I come to the age of twenty-
five: that is, in six years,' said Miss McCabe proudly. 'You don't call
_that_ a sacrifice?'
Merton wanted to say that the most magnificent of natural varieties would
only be in its proper place. But the _man of business_ and the manager
of a great and beneficent association overcame the mere amateur of
beauty, and he only said that the position of Lady Principal was worthy
of the ambition of a patriot, and a friend of the species.
'Well, I reckon! But a clause in Pappa's will is awkward for me, some.
It is about my marriage,' said Miss McCabe bravely.
Merton assumed an air of grave interest.
'Pappa left it in his will that I was to marry the man (under the age of
five-and-thirty, and of unimpeachable character and education) who should
discover, and add to the museum, the most original and unheard-of natural
variety, whether found in the Old or the New World.'
Merton could scarcely credit the report of his ears.
'Would you oblige me by repeating that statement?' he said, and Miss
McCabe repeated it in identical terms, obviously quoting textually from
the will.
'Now I understand your unhappy position,' said Merton, thoroughly
agreeing with the transatlantic critics who had pronounced the late Mr.
McCabe 'considerable of a crank.' 'But this is far too serious a matter
for me--for our Association. I am no legist, but I am convinced that, at
least British, and I doubt not American, law would promptly annul a
testatory clause so utterly unreasonable and unprecedented.'
'Unreasonable!' exclaimed Miss McCabe, rising to her feet with eyes of
flame, 'I am my father's daughter, and his wish is my law, whatever the
laws that men make may say.'
Her affectation of slang had fallen off; she was absolutely natural now,
and entirely in earnest.
Merton rose also.
'One moment,' he said. 'It would be impertinence in me to express my
admiration of you--of what you say. As the question is not a legal one
(in such I am no fit adviser) I shall think myself honoured if you will
permit me to be of any service in the circumstances. They are less
unprecedented than I hastily supposed. History records many examples of
fathers, even of royal rank, who have attached similar conditions to the
disposal of their daughters' hands.'
Merton was thinking of the kings in the treatises of Monsieur Charles
Perrault, Madame d'Aulnoy, and other historians of Fairyland; of monarchs
who give their daughters to the bold adventurers that bring the smallest
dog, or the singing rose, or the horse magical.
'What you really want, I think,' he went on, as Miss McCabe resumed her
seat, 'is to have your choice, as you said, among the competitors?'
'Yes,' replied the fair American, 'that is only natural.'
'But then,' said Merton, 'much depends on who decides as to the merits of
the competitors. With whom does the decision rest?'
'With the people.'
'With the people?'
'Yes, with the popular vote, as expressed through the newspaper that my
father founded--_The Yellow Flag_. The public is to see the exhibits,
the new varieties of nature, and the majority of votes is to carry the
day. "Trust the people!" that was Pappa's word.'
'Then anyone who chooses, of the age, character, and education stipulated
under the clause in the will, may go and bring in whatever variety of
nature he pleases and take his chance?'
'That is it all the time,' said the client. 'There is a trust, and the
trustees, friends of Pappa's, decide on the qualifications of the young
men who enter for the competition. If the trustees are satisfied they
allot money for expenses out of the exploration fund, so that nobody may
be stopped because he is poor.'
'There will be an enormous throng of competitors in these conditions--and
with such a prize,' Merton could not help adding.
'I reckon the trustees are middling particular. They'll weed them out.'
'Is there any restriction on the nationality of the competitors?' asked
Merton, on whom an idea was dawning.
'Only members of the English speaking races need apply,' said Miss
McCabe. 'Pappa took no stock in Spaniards or Turks.'
'The voters will be prejudiced in favour of their own fellow citizens?'
asked Merton. 'That is only natural.'
'Trust the people,' said Miss McCabe. 'The whole thing is to be kept as
dark as a blind coloured person hunting in a dark cellar for a black cat
that is not there.'
'A truly Miltonic illustration,' said Merton.
'The advertisement for competitors will be carefully worded, so as to
attract only young men of science. The young men are not to be told
about _me_: the prize is in dollars, "with other advantages to be later
specified." The varieties found are to be conveyed to a port abroad, not
yet named, and shipped for New York in a steamer belonging to the McCabe
Trust.'
'Then am I to understand that the conditions affecting your marriage are
still an entire secret?'
'That is so,' said Miss McCabe, 'and I guess from what the marchioness
told me, your reference, that you can keep a secret.'
'To keep secrets is the very essential of my vocation,' said Merton.
But _this_ secret, as will be seen, he did not absolutely keep.
'The arrangements,' he added, 'are most judicious.'
'Guess Pappa was 'cute,' said Miss McCabe, relapsing into her adopted
mannerisms.
'I think I now understand the case in all its bearings,' Merton went on.
'I shall give it my serious consideration. Perhaps I had better say no
more at present, but think over the matter. You remain in town for the
season?'
'Guess we've staked out a claim in Berkeley Square,' said Miss McCabe,
'an agreeable location.' She mentioned the number of the house.
'Then we are likely to meet now and then,' said Merton, 'and I trust that
I may be permitted to wait on you occasionally.'
Miss McCabe graciously assented; her chaperon, Lady Rathcoffey, was
summoned by her from the inner chamber and the society of Miss Blossom,
the typewriter; the pair drove away, and Merton was left to his own
reflections.
'I do not know what can be done for her,' he thought, 'except to see that
there is at least one eligible man, a gentleman, among the crowd of
competitors, and that he is a likely man to win the beautiful prize. And
that man is Bude, by Jove, if he wants to win it.'
The Earl of Bude, whose name at once occurred to Merton, was a remarkable
personage. The world knew him as rich, handsome, happy, and a mighty
hunter of big game. They knew not the mysterious grief that for years
had gnawed at his heart. Why did not Bude marry? No woman could say.
The world, moreover, knew not, but Merton did, that Lord Bude was the
mysterious Mr. Jones Harvey, who contributed the most original papers to
the Proceedings of the Geographical and Zoological Societies, and who had
conferred many strange beasts on the Gardens of the latter learned
institution. The erudite papers were read, the eccentric animals were
conferred, in the name of Mr. Jones Harvey. They came from outlandish
addresses in the ends of the earth, but, in the flesh, Jones Harvey had
been seen by no man, and his secret had been confided to Merton only, to
Logan, and two other school friends. He did good to science by stealth,
and blushed at the idea of being a F.R.S. There was no show of science
about Bude, and nothing exotic, except the singular circumstance that,
however he happened to be dressed, he always wore a ring, or pin, or
sleeve links set with very ugly and muddy looking pearls. From these
ornaments Lord Bude was inseparable; to chaff about presents from dusky
princesses on undiscovered shores he was impervious. Even Merton did not
know the cause of his attachment to these ungainly jewels, or the dark
memory of mysterious loss with which they were associated.
Merton's first care was to visit the divine Althaea, Mrs. Brown-Smith,
and other ladies of his acquaintance. Their cards were deposited at the
claim staked out by Miss McCabe in Berkeley Square, and that young lady
soon 'went everywhere,' and publicly confessed that she 'was having a
real lovely time.' By a little diplomacy Lord Bude was brought
acquainted with Miss McCabe. She consented to overlook his possession of
a coronet; titles were, to this heroine, not marvels (as to some of her
countrywomen and ours), but rather matters of indifference, scarcely even
suggesting hostile prejudice. The observers in society, mothers and
maids, and the chroniclers of fashion, soon perceived that there was at
least a marked _camaraderie_ between _the elegant aristocrat_, hitherto
indifferent to woman, untouched, as was deemed, by love, and the lovely
Child of Freedom. Miss McCabe sat by him while he drove his coach; on
the roof of his drag at Lord's; and of his houseboat at Henley, where she
fainted when the crew of Johns Hopkins University, U. S., was defeated by
a length by Balliol (where Lord Bude had been the favourite pupil of the
great Master). Merton remarked these tokens of friendship with approval.
If Bude could be induced to enter for the great competition, and if he
proved successful, there seemed no reason to suppose that Miss McCabe
would be dissatisfied with the People's choice.
Towards the end of the season, and in Bude's smoking-room, about five in
the July morning after a ball at Eglintoun House, Merton opened his
approaches. He began, cautiously, from talk of moors and forests; he
touched on lochs, he mentioned the Highland traditions of water bulls
(which haunt these meres); he spoke of the _Beathach mor Loch Odha_, a
legendary animal of immeasurable length. The _Beathach_ has twelve feet;
he has often been heard crashing through the ice in the nights of winter.
These tales the narrator has gleaned from the lips of the Celtic
peasantry of Letter Awe.
'I daresay he does break the ice,' said Bude. 'In the matter of cryptic
survivals of extinct species I can believe a good deal.'
'The sea serpent?' asked Merton.
'Seen him thrice,' said Bude.
'Then why did not Jones Harvey weigh in with a letter to _Nature_?'
'Jones Harvey has a scientific reputation to look after, and knows he
would be laughed at. That's the kind of hair-pin _he_ is,' said Bude,
quoting Miss McCabe. 'By Jove, Merton, that girl--' and he paused.
'Yes, she is pretty,' said Merton.
'Pretty! I have seen the women of the round world--before I went
to--well, never mind where, I used to think the Poles the most
magnificent, but _she_--'
'Whips creation,' said Merton. 'But I,' he went on, 'am rather more
interested in these other extraordinary animals. Do you seriously
believe, with your experience, that some extinct species are--not
extinct?'
'To be sure I do. The world is wide. But they are very shy. I once
stalked a Bunyip, in Central Australia, in a lagoon. The natives said he
was there: I watched for a week, squatting in the reeds, and in the grey
of the seventh dawn I saw him.'
'Did you shoot?'
'No, I observed him through a field glass first.'
'What is the beggar like?'
'Much like some of the Highland water cattle, as described, but it is his
ears they take for horns. Australia has no indigenous horned animal. He
is, I should say, about nine feet long, marsupial (he rose breast high),
and web-footed. I saw that when he dived. Other white men have seen
him--Buckley, the convict, for one, when he lived among the blacks.'
'Buckley was not an accurate observer.'
'Jones Harvey is.'
'Any other queer beasts?'
'Of course, plenty. You have heard of the Mylodon, the gigantic Sloth?
His bones, skin, and hair were lately found in a cave in Patagonia, with
a lot of his fodder. You can see them at the British Museum in South
Kensington. Primitive Patagonian man used the female of the species as a
milch-cow. He was a genial friendly kind of brute, accessible to charm
of manner and chopped hay. They fed him on that, in a domesticated
state.'
'But he is extinct. Hesketh Pritchard went to look for a live Mylodon,
and did not find him.'
'Did not know where to look,' said Bude.
'But you do?' asked Merton.
'Yes, I think so.'
'Then why don't you bring one over to the Zoo?'
'I may some day.'
'Are there any more survivors of extinct species?'
'Merton, is this an interview? Are you doing Mr. Jones Harvey at home
for a picture paper?'
'No, I've dropped the Press,' said Merton, 'I ask in a spirit of
scientific curiosity.'
'Well, there is the Dinornis, the Moa of New Zealand. A bird as big as
the Roc in the "Arabian Nights."'
'Have you seen _him_?'
'No, but I have seen _her_, the hen bird. She was sitting on eggs. No
man knows her nest but myself, and old Te-iki-pa, the chief medicine-man,
or Tohunga, of the Maori King. The Moa's eyrie is in the King's country.
It is a difficult country, and a dangerous business, if the cock Moa
chances to come home.'
'Bude, is this worthy of an old friend, this _blague_?'
'Do you doubt my word?'
'If you give me your word I must believe--that you dreamed it.'
_Then a strange thing happened_.
Bude walked to a small case of instruments that stood on a table in the
smoking-room. He unlocked it, took out a lancet, brought a Rhodian bowl
from a shelf, and bared his arm.
'Do you want proof?'
'Proof that you saw a hen Moa sitting?' asked Merton in amazement.
'Not exactly, but proof that Te-iki-pa knew a thing or two, quite as out
of the way as the habitat of the Moa.'
'What do you want me to do?'
'Bare your arm, and hold it over the bowl.'
The room was full of the yellow dusky light of an early summer morning in
London. Outside the heavy carts were rolling by: in full civilisation
the scene was strange.
'The Blood Covenant?' asked Merton.
Bude nodded.
Merton turned up his cuff, Bude let a little blood drop into the bowl,
then performed the same operation on his own arm.
'This is all rot,' he said, 'but without this I cannot show you, by
virtue of my oath to Te-iki-pa, what I mean to show you. Now repeat
after me what I am going to say.'
He spoke a string of words, among which Merton, as he repeated them,
could only recognise _mana_ and _atua_. The vowel sounds were as in
Italian.
'Now these words you must never report to any one, without my
permission.'
'Not likely,' said Merton, 'I only remember two of them, and these I knew
before.'
'All right,' said Bude.
He then veiled his face in a piece of silk that lay on a sofa, and
rapidly, in a low voice, chanted a kind of hymn in a tongue unknown to
Merton. All this he did with a bored air, as if he thought the
performance a superfluous mummery.
'Now what shall I show you? Something simple. Look at the bookcase, and
think of any book you may want to consult.'
Merton thought of the volume in M. of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The
volume slowly slid from the shelf, glided through the air to Merton, and
gently subsided on the table near him, open at the word _Moa_.
Merton walked across to the bookcase, took all the volumes from the
shelf, and carefully examined the backs and sides for springs and
mechanical advantages. There were none.
'Not half bad!' he said, when he had completed his investigation.
'You are satisfied that Te-iki-pa knew something? If you had seen what I
have seen, if you had seen the three days dead--' and Bude shivered
slightly.
'I have seen enough. Do you know how it is done?'
'No.'
'Well, a miracle is not what you call logical proof, but I believe that
you did see the Moa, and a still more extraordinary bird, Te-iki-pa.'
'Yes, they talk of strange beasts, but "nothing is stranger than man."
Did you ever hear of the Berbalangs of Cagayan Sulu?'
'Never in my life,' said Merton.
'Heaven preserve me from _them_,' said Bude, and he gently stroked the
strange muddy pearls in the sleeve-links on his loose shirt-cuff. 'Angels
and ministers of grace defend us,' he exclaimed, crossing himself (he was
of the old faith), and he fell silent.
It was a moment of emotion. Six silvery strokes were sounded from a
little clock on the chimney-piece. The hour of confidences had struck.
'Bude, you are serious about Miss McCabe?' asked Merton.
'I mean to put it to the touch at Goodwood.'
'No use!' said Merton.
Bude changed colour.
'Are _you_?'
'No,' interrupted Merton. 'But she is not free.'
'There is somebody in America? Nobody here, I think.'
'It is hardly that,' said Merton. 'Can you listen to rather a long
story? I'll cut it as much as possible. You must remember that I am
practically breaking my word of honour in telling you this. My honour is
in your hands.'
'Fire away,' said Bude, pouring a bottle of Apollinaris water into a long
tumbler, and drinking deep.
Merton told the tale of Miss McCabe's extraordinary involvement, and of
the wild conditions on which her hand was to be won. 'And as to her
heart, I think,' he added, 'if you pull off the prize--
If my heart by signs can tell,
Lordling, I have marked her daily,
And I think she loves thee well.'
'Thank you for that, old cock,' replied the peer, shaking Merton's hand.
He had recovered from his emotion.
'I'm on,' he added, after a moment's silence, 'but I shall enter as Jones
Harvey.'
'His name and his celebrated papers will impress the trustees,' said
Merton. 'Now what variety of nature shall you go for? Wild _men_ count.
Shall you fetch a Berbalang of what do you call it?'