changed places. But I have done something: I haven't buried my talent
in a napkin. Oh, my Pretty, go away, go away! You make a fool of me
again! I had almost forgotten how to be sorry that you couldn't love me.
Go away, go away! Go, go!"
He threw out his hands, and they lay along the grass. His face went down
into the tangled green, and she saw his shoulders shaken with sobs. She
dragged herself along the grass till she was close to him; then she
lifted his shoulders, and drew his head on to her lap, and clasped her
arms round him.
"My darling, my dear, my own!" she said. "You're tired, and you've
thought of nothing but your hateful book--your beautiful book, I
mean--but you do love me really. Not as I love you, but still you do
love me. Oh, Rupert, I'll nurse you, I'll take care of you, I'll be your
slave; and if you have to die, I shall die too, because there'll be
nothing left for me to do for you."
He put an arm round her. "It's worth dying to hear that," he said, and
brought his face to lie against her waist.
"But you shan't die. You must come back to London with me now--this
minute. The best opinion----"
"I had the best," he said. "Kiss me, my Pretty; oh, kiss me now that it
does mean something! Let me dream that I'm going to live, and that you
love me."
He lifted his face, and she kissed him.
"Rupert, you're _not_ going to die. It can't be true. It isn't true. It
shan't be true."
"It is; but I don't mind now, except for you. I'm a selfish beast. But
this is worth it all, and I _have_ done something great. You told me
to."
"Tell me," she said, "who was the doctor? Was he really the best?"
"It was Strongitharm," he said wearily.
She drew a long breath and clasped him closer. Then she pushed him away
and sprang to her feet.
"Stand up!" she said. "Let me look at you!"
He stood up, and she caught him by the elbows and stood looking at him.
Twice she tried to speak, and twice no voice obeyed; then she said
softly, huskily: "Rupert, listen! It's all a horrid dream. Wake up.
Haven't you seen the papers? Strongitharm went mad several months ago.
It was drink. He told _all_ his patients they were going to die of this
new disease of his that he'd invented. It's all his madness. You're
well--I know it. Oh, Rupert, you aren't going to die, and we love each
other! Oh, God is very good!"
He drew a long breath.
"Are you sure? It's like coming back from chloroform; and yet it hurts,
and yet--but I wrote the book! Oh, Sybil, I shall never write another
great book!"
"Ah yes, you will--you shall," she said, looking at him with wet eyes.
"I have you," he said. "Oh, thank God, I have you! but I shall never
write another great book."
And he never has.
But he is very happy. And Sybil cannot see that his later works are not
in the same field with the first. She thinks the critics fools. And he
loves her the more for her folly.
XIII
ALCIBIADES
"Oh, _do_ let me have him in the carriage with me; he won't hurt any
one, he's a perfect angel."
"Angels like him travels in the dog-box," said the porter.
Judy ended an agonised search for her pocket.
"Would you be offended," she said, "if I offered you half-a-crown?"
"Give the guard a bob, Miss." The hand curved into a cup resting on the
carriage window, answered her question. "It's more'n enough for him,
being a single man, whereas me, I'm risking my situation and nine
children at present to say no more, when I----"
The turn of a railway key completed the sentence.
Judy and the angel were alone. He was a very nice angel--long-haired and
brownly-black--his race the Aberdeen, his name Alcibiades. He put up a
respectful and adoring nose, and his mistress kissed him between the
eyes.
"How could they try to part us," she asked, "when there's only us two
left?"
Alcibiades, with swimming eyes, echoed in a little moan of true love the
question: "How could they?"
The question was put again by both later in the day. Judy was to stay
with an aunt while her mother sailed to Madeira to meet there the father
returning from South Africa, full of wounds and honour, and to spend on
the Island what was left of the winter. Now it was December.
A thick fog covered London with a veil of ugliness; the cabman was
aggrieved and aggrieving--Alcibiades had tried to bite him--and Judy was
on the verge of tears when the fog at last lifted, and allowed her to be
driven to her aunt's suburban house, yellow brickish, with a slate roof
and a lean forecourt, wherein cypresses, stunted and blackened, spoke
eloquently of lives more blank than the death whose emblem they were.
Through the slits of the drab Venetian blinds, gaslight streamed into
the winter dusk.
"There'll be tea, anyhow," sighed Judy, recklessly overpaying the
cabman.
Inside the house where the lights were, the Aunt was surrounded by a
dozen ladies of about her own age and station; "Tabbies" the world might
have called them. All were busy with mysteries of many coloured silks
and satins, lace and linen; at least all held such in their hands. The
gathering was in fact a "working party" for the approaching bazaar. But
the real work of bazaars is not done at parties.
"Yes," the Aunt was saying, "so nice for dear Julia. I'm truly glad that
she should begin her visit with a little gaiety. In parting or sorrow we
should always seek to distract the mind, should we not, dear Mrs
Biddle?"
"The young are all too easily distracted by the shows of this world,"
said dear Mrs Biddle heavily.
And several ladies murmured approval.
"But you can't exactly call a church bazaar the shows of this world, can
you?" urged the Aunt, sitting very upright, all black and beady.
"It's the thin end of the Rubicon sometimes," said Mrs Biddle.
"Then why----" began the youngest Tabby--and then the door bell rang,
and every one said: "Here she is!"
The prim maid announced her, and she took two steps forward, and stood
blinking in the gaslight with her hat on one side, and no gloves. Every
one noticed that at once.
"Come in, my dear," said the Aunt, rustling forward. "I have a few
friends this afternoon, and--Oh, my gracious, what has happened!"
What had happened was quite simple. In her rustling advance some
wandering trail of the Aunt's black beadiness had caught on the knotted
fringe of the table-cloth, and drawn this after her. A mass of silk and
lace and ribbon lay sprinkled along the edges of the table where the
Tabbies sat; a good store of needles, scissors, and cotton reels mingled
with it. Now all this swept to the floor on the moving table-cloth, at
the very instant when a rough brownly-black, long-eared person with a
sharp nose and very muddy paws bounded into the room, to the full length
of his chain. His bound landed him in the very middle of the
ribbon-lace-cotton-reel confusion. Judy caught the dog up in her arms,
and her apologies would have melted my heart, or yours, dear reader, in
an instant. But Tabbies are Tabbies, and a bazaar is a bazaar. No more
sewing was done that day; what was left of the afternoon proved all too
short for the disentangling, the partial cleansing of the desecrated
lace-cotton-reel-silk-muddle. And Alcibiades was tied up in the
back-kitchen to the wheel of the patent mangle; he howled without
ceasing.
"My dear," said the Aunt, when tea was over, and the last Tabby had
found her goloshes and gone home in them, "you are most welcome under
any roof of mine, but--(may I ask you to close the baize door at the top
of the kitchen stairs--thank you--and now this one--I am obliged. One
cannot hear oneself speak for that terrible animal)--you must get rid of
the cur to-morrow."
"Oh, Aunt! he's not a cur--he's pure-bred."
"Thank you," said the Aunt, "I believe I am as good a judge of dogs as
any lady. My own dear Snubs has only been dead a year and two months
last Tuesday. I know that a well-bred dog should have smooth hair, at
any rate----"
The mother of Snubs had been distantly related to a family of
respectable middle-class fox-terriers.
"I am very sorry," said Judy. She meant apology, but the Aunt took it
for sympathy, and softened somewhat.
"A nice little smooth-coated dog now," she said, "a fox-terrier, or an
Italian greyhound; you see I am not ignorant of the names of various
patterns of dog. I will get you one myself; we will go to the Dogs' Home
at Battersea, where really nice dogs are often sold quite cheap. Or
perhaps they might take your poor cur in exchange."
Judy began to cry.
"Yes, cry, my dear," said the Aunt kindly; "it will do you a world of
good."
When the Aunt was asleep--she had closed her ears to the protests of
Alcibiades with wadding left over from a handkerchief sachet--Judy crept
down in her woolly white dressing-gown, and coaxed the kitchen fire back
to life. Then she sat in front of it, on the speckless rag carpet, and
nursed Alcibiades and scolded him, and explained that he really must be
a good dog, and that we all have something to put up with in this life.
"You know, Alby dear," she said, "it's not very nice for me either, but
_I_ don't howl and try to upset mangles. Don't you be afraid, dear: you
shan't go to the Dogs' Home."
So kindly, yet strongly, did she urge her point that Alcibiades, tied to
the leg of the kitchen table, consented to sleep quietly for the rest of
the night.
Next day, when the Aunt enquired searchingly as to Judy's powers of
fancywork, and what she would do for the bazaar, Judy declared outright
that she did not know one end of a needle from the other.
"But I can paint a little," she said, "and I am rather good at
wood-carving."
"That will be very nice." The Aunt already saw, in fancy, her stall
outshine those of all other Tabbies, with glories of sabots and
tambourines decorated with rosy sprays "hand-painted," and carved white
wood boxes just the size to hold nothing useful.
"And I'll do you some," said Judy; "only I can't work if I'm distracted
about Alby--my dog, you know. Oh, Aunt, _do_ let him stay! He really is
valuable, and he hasn't made a bit of noise since last night."
"It is quite useless," the Aunt was sternly beginning--then suddenly her
voice changed. "Is the cur _really_ valuable?" she asked.
"Uncle Reggie gave five guineas for him when he was a baby boy," said
Judy eagerly, "and he's worth much more now."
"But he must be very old--when your Uncle Reggie was a boy----"
"I mean when Alcibiades was a boy."
"And who is Alcibiades?"
Judy began all over again, and urged one or two new points.
"I don't want to be harsh," said the Aunt at last, "you _shall_ have the
little breakfast room to paint and carve in as you suggest. Of course I
couldn't have shavings and paint pots lying about all over the
dining-room and drawing-room. And you shall keep your cur."
"Oh, Aunty," cried Judy, "you are a darling!"
"Yes," the Aunt went on complacently, "you shall keep your cur till the
bazaar, and then we will sell it for the benefit of the Fund for the
Amelioration of the Daughters of the Country Clergy."
And from this decision no tears and no entreaties would move her.
Judy made a den for herself and Alcibiades in the little breakfast room.
There was no painting light--so she looked out a handful of the sketches
that she had done last summer and framed them. Most of her time she
spent in writing to her friends to know whether any one could take care
of a darling dog, who was a perfect angel. And alas! no one could--or
would.
With the connivance of the cook, Alcibiades had a bed in a box in the
den, and from the very first he would at a word conceal himself in it
the moment the step of the Aunt sounded on the oil-cloth-covered stairs.
The sketches were framed, and some of the frames were lightly carved.
The Aunt was enchanted, but, on the subject of Alcibiades, adamant.
And now it was the day of the bazaar. Judy had run wires along the wall
of the schoolroom behind her Aunt's stall, and from it hung the best of
the sketches. She had arranged the stall herself, glorifying it with the
Eastern shawls and draperies that her father had sent her from India. It
did far outshine any other stall, even that of Lady Bates, the wife of
the tallow Knight. The Aunt was really grateful--truly appreciative.
But her mind was made up about the "cur."
"If it really _is_ worth anything we'll sell it. If not----" She paused
on the dark hint, and Judy's miserable fancy lost itself among ropes and
rivers and rat-poison.
To Alcibiades the bazaar was as much a festival as to any Tabby of them
all. He had been washed, which is terrible at the time, but makes you
self-respecting afterwards, a little puffed-up even. He had been allowed
to come out by the front door, with his mistress in her beautiful dress
that reminded him of rabbits. No one but Alcibiades himself will ever
know what tortures of shame and misery, fighting with joy and affection,
he had endured on those other occasions when he had been smuggled out of
the back door in the early morning to take the damp air with his beloved
lady and she had worn a shabby mackintosh and a red tam-o-shanter.
To-day he wore a blue ribbon; it was uncomfortable, but he knew it spelt
distinction. He rode in a carriage. It was not like the little
governess-cart which had carried him and his mistress through the lanes
about Maidstone; but it was a carriage, and a large horse was his
slave. His mistress herself had tied his blue ribbon; it was she, too,
who adjusted the chain that attached him to a strong staple driven in
just above the schoolroom wainscotting. The chain allowed him to sit at
her feet as she stood by the stall waiting for purchasers, and scanning
the face of each newcomer in an eager anxiety to find there the
countenance of some one who really loved dogs.
But the people were most awful, and she had to own it to herself. There
were Tabbies by the dozen, and young ladies by the score--young ladies
all dressed differently, yet all alike in the fashion of the year before
last; all vacant-faced, smiling agreeably because they knew they ought
to smile--the young of the Tabby kind--Tabby kittens, in fact. No doubt
they were really worthy and interesting, but they did not seem so to
Judy.
There was a sprinkling of men--middle-aged mostly, and bald. There were
a few youths; by some fatality all were fair, and reminded Judy of pork.
A Tabby stopped at her stall, turned over all things and bought a beaded
table-napkin ring. The purchase and the purchaser seemed to Judy to
typify her whole life and surroundings. All her soul reached out to the
Island. She sighed, then she looked up. The crowd had thickened since
she last surveyed it. Four steps led down to the schoolroom from the
outer world: on the top step was a lady, well dressed--oh! marvel!--and
beside her a man--a gentleman. Well, Judy supposed all these poor dear
people were gentlefolk, but these two were of her world. As she gazed
her eyes and those of the man met; the lady was lost in the crowd, and
Judy saw her no more. The man made straight for the stall where were the
framed sketches, the white dress, fur-trimmed, the russet hair and green
eyes of Judy, and the brownly-black, blue-ribboned Alcibiades. But
before he reached them a wave of buyers broke on the shore of Judy's
stall, and he had been watching her for nearly half an hour before a
young woman's long-deferred choice of a Christmas gift for a grandfather
fell happily on a pair of purple bed-socks, and, for the moment, Judy
breathed free.
"I told you so," said the Aunt, rattling money in a leather bag; "I
_knew_ just before Christmas was _the_ time. Everybody _has_ to give
Christmas presents to all their relations. You see! the things are going
like wildfire."
"Yes, Aunt," said Judy. Alcibiades took advantage of the momentary calm
to lick her hand exhaustively. Judy wondered wearily what had become of
the man, the only man in that cheerless assembly who looked as though he
liked dogs. "He must have been trying to get somewhere else," she said;
"he just looked in here by mistake, and when he saw the sort of people
we were, he--well--I don't wonder," she sighed, and, raising her eyes,
met his.
"I beg your pardon," said he. He meant apology.
She took it for enquiry, and smiled. "Do you want to buy something?" she
asked.
Her smile was more tired than she knew.
"I suppose I do," he said; "one does at bazaars, don't you know."
"Do you want a Christmas present?" asked Judy, businesslike; "if so, and
if you will tell me what kind of relation you want it for, perhaps I can
find something that they'd like."
"Could you? Now, that is really good. I want things for two aunts, three
cousins, a little sister, and my mother--but I needn't get _hers_ here
unless you've got something you think really--By Jove!"--his eyes had
caught the sketches--"are _those_ for sale?"
"That is rather the idea," said Judy. Her spirits were rising, though
she couldn't have told you why. "Things at a bazaar are usually for
sale, aren't they?"
"Everything?" said he--and he stroked the not resentful neck of
Alcibiades; "this good little beast isn't in the market, I'm afraid?"
"Why? Would you buy him?"
"I'd think twice before I said no. My mother is frightfully fond of
dogs."
Quite unreasonably Judy felt that she did not want to sell Alcibiades as
a present to any one's mother.
"The sketches," she said.
"The sketches," said he; "why, there's Maidstone Church and Farley and
Teston Lock and Allington. How much are they?"
She told him.
"I must have some. May I have a dozen? They're disgracefully cheap, and
I feel like an American pork man buying works of art by the dozen--for
they _are_ jolly good--and it brings back old times. I was quartered
there once."
"I knew it," she said to herself. Alcibiades stood up with his paws on
her arm. "Be quiet," she said to him; "you mustn't talk now. I'm busy."
Alcibiades gave her a reproachful look, and lay down.
The stranger smiled; a very jolly smile, Judy thought.
"Ripping little beast, isn't he?" said the stranger.
"I suppose you're invalided home?" she said. She couldn't help it. A man
in the Service. One who had been quartered at Maidstone, her own dear
Maidstone. He was no longer a stranger.
"Yes," he said; "beastly bore. But I shall be all right in two or three
months; I hope the fighting won't be all over by then."
"Have you sold this gentleman anything?" said the Aunt firmly, "because
Mrs Biddle wants to look at some d'oyleys."
"I'm just selling something," answered Judy. Then she turned to him and
spoke softly. "I say, do you really like dogs?" said she.
"Of course I do." The young man opened surprised grey eyes at her, as
who should say: "Now, do I look like a man who doesn't like dogs?"
"Well, then," she said, "Alcibiades _is_ for sale."
"Is that his name? Why?"
"Oh, surely you know: wasn't it Alcibiades who gave up being dictator or
something rather than have his dog's ears cut off?"
"I seem to remember something of the sort," he said.
"Well," said she, "his price is twenty guineas, but----"
He whistled very softly.
"Yes--I know," she said, "but I'll--yes, Aunt, in one moment!" She went
on in an agonised undertone: "His price is twenty guineas. Say you'll
have him. Say it _loud_. You won't really have to pay anything for
him--No, I'm not mad."
"I'll give you twenty guineas for the dog," said the man, standing
straight and soldierly against the tumbled mass of mats and pin-cushions
and chair-backs.
The Aunt drew a long breath and turned to minister to Mrs Biddle's deep
need of d'oyleys.
"Come and have tea," said the stranger; "you're tired out."
"No--I can't. Of course I can't--but I'll take you over to Mrs Piddock's
stall and----" She led him away. "Look here," she said, "I'm sure you're
a decent sort. Here's the money to pay for him. My aunt says if I don't
sell him she'll have him killed. Will you keep him for me till my people
come home? Oh, do--he really _is_ an angel. And give me your name and
address. You must think me a maniac, but I am so horribly fond of him.
Will you?"
"Of course I will," he said heartily, "but I shall pay for him. I'll
write a cheque: you can pay me when you get him back. Thank you--yes, I
am sure that pin-cushion would delight my aunt."
Judy, with burning cheeks, found her way back to her stall.
"Oh, Alcibiades," she said, unfastening the blue ribbon, "I'm sure he's
nice. Don't bite him, there's a dear!"
A cheque signed "Richard Graeme" and a card with an address came into
Judy's hands, and the chain of Alcibiades left them.
"I know you'll be good to him," she said; "don't give him meat, only
biscuit, and sulphur in his drinking water. But you know all that.
You've got me out of a frightful hole, and I'll bless you as long as I
live. Good-bye." She stooped to the Aberdeen, now surprised and pained.
"Good-bye, my dear old boy!"
And Alcibiades, stubborn resistance in every line of his figure, in
every hair of his coat, was dragged away through the crowded bazaar.
Judy went to bed very tired. The bazaar had been a success, and the
success had been talked over and the money counted till late in the
evening--nearly eleven, that is, which is late for Tabbies--yet she woke
at four. Some one was calling her. It was--no, he was gone--her eyes
pricked at the thought--yet--surely that could be the voice of no other
than Alcibiades? She sat up in bed and listened. It was he! That was his
dear voice whining at the side gate. Those were his darling paws
scratching the sacred paint off it.
Judy swept down the stairs like a silent whirlwind, turned key, drew
bolts, and in a moment she and the cur were "sobbing in each other's
arms."
She carried him up to her room, washed his dear, muddy paws, and spread
her golf cape that he might lie on the bed beside her.
In chilliest, earliest dawn she rose and dressed. She found a wire that
had supported her pictures at the bazaar, and she wrote a note and tied
it to the collar of Alcibiades, where she noticed and untied a frayed
end of rope. This was the note:
"He has run home to me. Why did you take the chain off? He
always bites through cord. Don't beat him for it; he'll soon
forget me."
The tears came into her eyes as she wrote it; it seemed to her so very
pathetic. She did not quite believe that Alcibiades would soon forget
her--but if he did----?
The note did not lack pathos, either, in the eyes of Captain Graeme,
when, two hours later, he found it under the chin of a mournfully
howling Alcibiades, securely attached by picture wire to the railings of
his mother's house.
The Captain took a turn on the Heath, and thought. And his thoughts were
these: "She's the prettiest girl I've seen since I came home. It's
deuced dull here. Shouldn't wonder if she's dull too, poor little girl."
Then he went home and cut a glove in pieces and sewed the pieces
together, slowly but solidly as soldiers and sailors do sew. So that
when, two nights later, the claws and the voice of Alcibiades roused
Judy from sleep--her aunt most fortunately slept on the other side of
the house--she found, after the first rapturous hug of reunion, a
something under the hand that caressed the neck of Alcibiades.
The gaslight in her own room defined the something as a bag of leather,
the tan leather of which gentlemen's gloves are made. There was a bit of
worn strap hanging below it. Within was a note.
"A thousand thanks for bringing him home. If he _should_ run
away again, please let me know. And don't trouble to send him
back. I'll call for him, if I may.
"RICHARD GRAEME."
Judy would very much have liked to let Captain Graeme call, but there
are such things as aunts.
She tied another note to the "cur's" collar and wired him once more to
the Paragon House railings. The note said:
"It's no use. He can bite through leather. Do use a chain."
Next time Alcibiades returned he dragged a half yard of fine chain. It
was neatly filed, but Judy was a woman and the detail escaped her.
That morning she and Alcibiades slept late, the dressing-bell was
ringing as she woke.
The cook helped; the Aunt most fortunately had a luncheon engagement
with a Tabby in Sidcup. Alcibiades being promised a walk later,
consented to wait, trifling with a bone, in silence and the coal cellar.
At eleven Judy rewarded his patience. She went out with him, and somehow
it seemed wise to put on a pleasant-coloured dress, and one's best furs
and one's prettiest hat.
"I am afraid I shall see him," she told herself; "but," she added, "I am
much more afraid that my aunt will see Alcibiades." On the edge of the
Heath she met him. "Here's the dear dog," she said. "Oh, can't you find
a stronger chain?"