third course to burial or cremation. You could keep all your dear ones
by you. Bric-à-brac of that sort stuck about the house would be as
good as most company, and much less expensive. You might have them
fitted up with clockwork to do things.
"Of course they would have to be varnished, but they need not shine
more than lots of people do naturally. Old Manningtree's bald head....
Anyhow, you could talk to them without interruption. Even aunts. There
is a great future before taxidermy, depend upon it. There is fossils
again...."
He suddenly became silent.
"No, I don't think I ought to tell you that." He sucked at his pipe
thoughtfully. "Thanks, yes. Not too much water.
"Of course, what I tell you now will go no further. You know I have
made some dodos and a great auk? No! Evidently you are an amateur at
taxidermy. My dear fellow, half the great auks in the world are about
as genuine as the handkerchief of Saint Veronica, as the Holy Coat of
Treves. We make 'em of grebes' feathers and the like. And the great
auk's eggs too!"
"Good heavens!"
"Yes, we make them out of fine porcelain. I tell you it is worth
while. They fetch--one fetched £300 only the other day. That one was
really genuine, I believe, but of course one is never certain. It is
very fine work, and afterwards you have to get them dusty, for no one
who owns one of these precious eggs has ever the temerity to clean the
thing. That's the beauty of the business. Even if they suspect an egg
they do not like to examine it too closely. It's such brittle capital
at the best.
"You did not know that taxidermy rose to heights like that. My boy, it
has risen higher. I have rivalled the hands of Nature herself. One of
the _genuine_ great auks"--his voice fell to a whisper--one of the
_genuine_ great auks _was made by me_."
"No. You must study ornithology, and find out which it is yourself.
And what is more, I have been approached by a syndicate of dealers
to stock one of the unexplored skerries to the north of Iceland with
specimens. I may--some day. But I have another little thing in hand
just now. Ever heard of the dinornis?
"It is one of those big birds recently extinct in New Zealand. 'Moa'
is its common name, so called because extinct: there is no moa now.
See? Well, they have got bones of it, and from some of the marshes
even feathers and dried bits of skin. Now, I am going to--well, there
is no need to make any bones about it--going to _forge_ a complete
stuffed moa. I know a chap out there who will pretend to make the find
in a kind of antiseptic swamp, and say he stuffed it at once, as it
threatened to fall to pieces. The feathers are peculiar, but I have
got a simply lovely way of dodging up singed bits of ostrich plume.
Yes, that is the new smell you noticed. They can only discover the
fraud with a microscope, and they will hardly care to pull a nice
specimen to bits for that.
"In this way, you see, I give my little push in the advancement of
science.
"But all this is merely imitating Nature. I have done more than that
in my time. I have--beaten her."
He took his feet down from the mantel-board, and leant over
confidentially towards me. "I have _created_ birds," he said in a low
voice. "_New_ birds. Improvements. Like no birds that was ever seen
before."
He resumed his attitude during an impressive silence.
"Enrich the universe; _rath_-er. Some of the birds I made were new
kinds of humming birds, and very beautiful little things, but some of
them were simply rum. The rummest, I think, was the _Anomalopteryx
Jejuna. Jejunus-a-um_--empty--so called because there was really
nothing in it; a thoroughly empty bird--except for stuffing. Old
Javvers has the thing now, and I suppose he is almost as proud of it
as I am. It is a masterpiece, Bellows. It has all the silly clumsiness
of your pelican, all the solemn want of dignity of your parrot,
all the gaunt ungainliness of a flamingo, with all the extravagant
chromatic conflict of a mandarin duck. _Such_ a bird. I made it out
of the skeletons of a stork and a toucan and a job lot of feathers.
Taxidermy of that kind is just pure joy, Bellows, to a real artist in
the art.
"How did I come to make it? Simple enough, as all great inventions
are. One of those young genii who write us Science Notes in the papers
got hold of a German pamphlet about the birds of New Zealand, and
translated some of it by means of a dictionary and his mother-wit--he
must have been one of a very large family with a small mother--and he
got mixed between the living apteryx and the extinct anomalopteryx;
talked about a bird five feet high, living in the jungles of the North
Island, rare, shy, specimens difficult to obtain, and so on. Javvers,
who even for a collector, is a miraculously ignorant man, read these
paragraphs, and swore he would have the thing at any price. Raided
the dealers with enquiries. It shows what a man can do by
persistence--will-power. Here was a bird-collector swearing he would
have a specimen of a bird that did not exist, that never had existed,
and which for very shame of its own profane ungainliness, probably
would not exist now if it could help itself. And he got it. _He got
it_."
"Have some more whisky, Bellows?" said the taxidermist, rousing
himself from a transient contemplation of the mysteries of will-power
and the collecting turn of mind. And, replenished, he proceeded to
tell me of how he concocted a most attractive mermaid, and how an
itinerant preacher, who could not get an audience because of it,
smashed it because it was idolatry, or worse, at Burslem Wakes. But
as the conversation of all the parties to this transaction,
creator, would-be preserver, and destroyer, was uniformly unfit for
publication, this cheerful incident must still remain unprinted.
The reader unacquainted with the dark ways of the collector may
perhaps be inclined to doubt my taxidermist, but so far as great auks'
eggs, and the bogus stuffed birds are concerned, I find that he has
the confirmation of distinguished ornithological writers. And the note
about the New Zealand bird certainly appeared in a morning paper of
unblemished reputation, for the Taxidermist keeps a copy and has shown
it to me.
A DEAL IN OSTRICHES
"Talking of the prices of birds, I've seen an ostrich that cost three
hundred pounds," said the Taxidermist, recalling his youth of travel.
"Three hundred pounds!"
He looked at me over his spectacles. "I've seen another that was
refused at four."
"No," he said, "it wasn't any fancy points. They was just plain
ostriches. A little off colour, too--owing to dietary. And there
wasn't any particular restriction of the demand either. You'd have
thought five ostriches would have ruled cheap on an East Indiaman. But
the point was, one of 'em had swallowed a diamond.
"The chap it got it off was Sir Mohini Padishah, a tremendous swell, a
Piccadilly swell you might say up to the neck of him, and then an ugly
black head and a whopping turban, with this diamond in it. The blessed
bird pecked suddenly and had it, and when the chap made a fuss it
realised it had done wrong, I suppose, and went and mixed itself with
the others to preserve its _incog_. It all happened in a minute. I was
among the first to arrive, and there was this heathen going over his
gods, and two sailors and the man who had charge of the birds laughing
fit to split. It was a rummy way of losing a jewel, come to think of
it. The man in charge hadn't been about just at the moment, so that he
didn't know which bird it was. Clean lost, you see. I didn't feel half
sorry, to tell you the truth. The beggar had been swaggering over his
blessed diamond ever since he came aboard.
"A thing like that goes from stem to stern of a ship in no time. Every
one was talking about it. Padishah went below to hide his feelings.
At dinner--he pigged at a table by himself, him and two other
Hindoos--the captain kind of jeered at him about it, and he got very
excited. He turned round and talked into my ear. He would not buy the
birds; he would have his diamond. He demanded his rights as a British
subject. His diamond must be found. He was firm upon that. He would
appeal to the House of Lords. The man in charge of the birds was one
of those wooden-headed chaps you can't get a new idea into anyhow. He
refused any proposal to interfere with the birds by way of medicine.
His instructions were to feed them so-and-so and treat them so-and-so,
and it was as much as his place was worth not to feed them so-and-so
and treat them so-and-so. Padishah had wanted a stomach-pump--though
you can't do that to a bird, you know. This Padishah was full of bad
law, like most of these blessed Bengalis, and talked of having a lien
on the birds, and so forth. But an old boy, who said his son was a
London barrister, argued that what a bird swallowed became _ipso
facto_ part of the bird, and that Padishah's only remedy lay in
an action for damages, and even then it might be possible to show
contributory negligence. He hadn't any right of way about an ostrich
that didn't belong to him. That upset Padishah extremely, the more so
as most of us expressed an opinion that that was the reasonable view.
There wasn't any lawyer aboard to settle the matter, so we all talked
pretty free. At last, after Aden, it appears that he came round to the
general opinion, and went privately to the man in charge and made an
offer for all five ostriches.
"The next morning there was a fine shindy at breakfast. The man hadn't
any authority to deal with the birds, and nothing on earth would
induce him to sell; but it seems he told Padishah that a Eurasian
named Potter had already made him an offer, and on that Padishah
denounced Potter before us all. But I think the most of us thought it
rather smart of Potter, and I know that when Potter said that he'd
wired at Aden to London to buy the birds, and would have an answer at
Suez, I cursed pretty richly at a lost opportunity.
"At Suez, Padishah gave way to tears--actual wet tears--when Potter
became the owner of the birds, and offered him two hundred and fifty
right off for the five, being more than two hundred per cent. on what
Potter had given. Potter said he'd be hanged if he parted with a
feather of them--that he meant to kill them off one by one and find
the diamond; but afterwards, thinking it over, he relented a little.
He was a gambling hound, was this Potter, a little queer at cards, and
this kind of prize-packet business must have suited him down to the
ground. Anyhow, he offered, for a lark, to sell the birds separately
to separate people by auction at a starting price of £80 for a bird.
But one of them, he said, he meant to keep for luck.
"You must understand this diamond was a valuable one--a little Jew
chap, a diamond merchant, who was with us, had put it at three or
four thousand when Padishah had shown it to him--and this idea of an
ostrich gamble caught on. Now it happened that I'd been having a
few talks on general subjects with the man who looked after these
ostriches, and quite incidentally he'd said one of the birds was
ailing, and he fancied it had indigestion. It had one feather in its
tail almost all white, by which I knew it, and so when, next day, the
auction started with it, I capped Padishah's eighty-five by ninety.
I fancy I was a bit too sure and eager with my bid, and some of the
others spotted the fact that I was in the know. And Padishah went for
that particular bird like an irresponsible lunatic. At last the Jew
diamond merchant got it for £175, and Padishah said £180 just after
the hammer came down--so Potter declared. At any rate the Jew merchant
secured it, and there and then he got a gun and shot it. Potter made a
Hades of a fuss because he said it would injure the sale of the other
three, and Padishah, of course, behaved like an idiot; but all of us
were very much excited. I can tell you I was precious glad when that
dissection was over, and no diamond had turned up--precious glad. I'd
gone to one-forty on that particular bird myself.
"The little Jew was like most Jews--he didn't make any great fuss over
bad luck; but Potter declined to go on with the auction until it was
understood that the goods could not be delivered until the sale was
over. The little Jew wanted to argue that the case was exceptional,
and as the discussion ran pretty even, the thing was postponed until
the next morning. We had a lively dinner-table that evening, I can
tell you, but in the end Potter got his way, since it would stand to
reason he would be safer if he stuck to all the birds, and that we
owed him some consideration for his sportsmanlike behaviour. And the
old gentleman whose son was a lawyer said he'd been thinking the thing
over and that it was very doubtful if, when a bird had been opened and
the diamond recovered, it ought not to be handed back to the
proper owner. I remember I suggested it came under the laws of
treasure-trove--which was really the truth of the matter. There was a
hot argument, and we settled it was certainly foolish to kill the bird
on board the ship. Then the old gentleman, going at large through his
legal talk, tried to make out the sale was a lottery and illegal,
and appealed to the captain; but Potter said he sold the birds _as_
ostriches. He didn't want to sell any diamonds, he said, and didn't
offer that as an inducement. The three birds he put up, to the best of
his knowledge and belief, did _not_ contain a diamond. It was in the
one he kept--so he hoped.
"Prices ruled high next day all the same. The fact that now there were
four chances instead of five of course caused a rise. The blessed
birds averaged 227, and, oddly enough, this Padishah didn't secure one
of 'em--not one. He made too much shindy, and when he ought to have
been bidding he was talking about liens, and, besides, Potter was a
bit down on him. One fell to a quiet little officer chap, another to
the little Jew, and the third was syndicated by the engineers. And
then Potter seemed suddenly sorry for having sold them, and said he'd
flung away a clear thousand pounds, and that very likely he'd draw a
blank and that he always had been a fool, but when I went and had a
bit of a talk to him, with the idea of getting him to hedge on his
last chance, I found he'd already sold the bird he'd reserved to a
political chap that was on board, a chap who'd been studying Indian
morals and social questions in his vacation. That last was the three
hundred pounds bird. Well, they landed three of the blessed creatures
at Brindisi--though the old gentleman said it was a breach of the
Customs regulations--and Potter and Padishah landed too. The Hindoo
seemed half mad as he saw his blessed diamond going this way and
that, so to speak. He kept on saying he'd get an injunction--he had
injunction on the brain--and giving his name and address to the chaps
who'd bought the birds, so that they'd know where to send the diamond.
None of them wanted his name and address, and none of them would give
their own. It was a fine row I can tell you--on the platform. They all
went off by different trains. I came on to Southampton, and there
I saw the last of the birds, as I came ashore; it was the one the
engineers bought, and it was standing up near the bridge, in a kind of
crate, and looking as leggy and silly a setting for a valuable diamond
as ever you saw--if it _was_ a setting for a valuable diamond.
"_How did it end_? Oh! like that. Well--perhaps. Yes, there's one more
thing that may throw light on it. A week or so after landing I was
down Regent-street doing a bit of shopping, and who should I see
arm-in-arm and having a purple time of it but Padishah and Potter. If
you come to think of it--
"Yes. _I've_ thought that. Only, you see, there's no doubt the diamond
was real. And Padishah was an eminent Hindoo. I've seen his name
in the papers--often. But whether the bird swallowed the diamond
certainly is another matter, as you say."
THROUGH A WINDOW
After his legs were set, they carried Bailey into the study and put
him on a couch before the open window. There he lay, a live--even a
feverish man down to the loins, and below that a double-barrelled
mummy swathed in white wrappings. He tried to read, even tried to
write a little, but most of the time he looked out of the window.
He had thought the window cheerful to begin with, but now he thanked
God for it many times a day. Within, the room was dim and grey, and
in the reflected light the wear of the furniture showed plainly. His
medicine and drink stood on the little table, with such litter as the
bare branches of a bunch of grapes or the ashes of a cigar upon a
green plate, or a day old evening paper. The view outside was flooded
with light, and across the corner of it came the head of the acacia,
and at the foot the top of the balcony-railing of hammered iron. In
the foreground was the weltering silver of the river, never quiet and
yet never tiresome. Beyond was the reedy bank, a broad stretch of
meadow land, and then a dark line of trees ending in a group of
poplars at the distant bend of the river, and, upstanding behind them,
a square church tower.
Up and down the river, all day long, things were passing. Now a string
of barges drifting down to London, piled with lime or barrels of beer;
then a steam-launch, disengaging heavy masses of black smoke, and
disturbing the whole width of the river with long rolling waves; then
an impetuous electric launch, and then a boatload of pleasure-seekers,
a solitary sculler, or a four from some rowing club. Perhaps the river
was quietest of a morning or late at night. One moonlight night some
people drifted down singing, and with a zither playing--it sounded
very pleasantly across the water.
In a few days Bailey began to recognise some of the craft; in a week
he knew the intimate history of half-a-dozen. The launch _Luzon_, from
Fitzgibbon's, two miles up, would go fretting by, sometimes three or
four times a day, conspicuous with its colouring of Indian-red and
yellow, and its two Oriental attendants; and one day, to Bailey's vast
amusement, the house-boat _Purple Emperor_ came to a stop outside, and
breakfasted in the most shameless domesticity. Then one afternoon, the
captain of a slow-moving barge began a quarrel with his wife as they
came into sight from the left, and had carried it to personal violence
before he vanished behind the window-frame to the right. Bailey
regarded all this as an entertainment got up to while away his
illness, and applauded all the more moving incidents. Mrs Green,
coming in at rare intervals with his meals, would catch him clapping
his hands or softly crying, "Encore!" But the river players had other
engagements, and his encore went unheeded.
"I should never have thought I could take such an interest in things
that did not concern me," said Bailey to Wilderspin, who used to come
in in his nervous, friendly way and try to comfort the sufferer by
being talked to. "I thought this idle capacity was distinctive of
little children and old maids. But it's just circumstances. I simply
can't work, and things have to drift; it's no good to fret and
struggle. And so I lie here and am as amused as a baby with a rattle,
at this river and its affairs.
"Sometimes, of course, it gets a bit dull, but not often.
"I would give anything, Wilderspin, for a swamp--just one swamp--once.
Heads swimming and a steam launch to the rescue, and a chap or so
hauled out with a boat-hook.... There goes Fitzgibbon's launch! They
have a new boat-hook, I see, and the little blackie is still in the
dumps. I don't think he's very well, Wilderspin. He's been like that
for two or three days, squatting sulky-fashion and meditating over the
churning of the water. Unwholesome for him to be always staring at the
frothy water running away from the stern."
They watched the little steamer fuss across the patch of sunlit river,
suffer momentary occultation from the acacia, and glide out of sight
behind the dark window-frame.
"I'm getting a wonderful eye for details," said Bailey: "I spotted
that new boat-hook at once. The other nigger is a funny little chap.
He never used to swagger with the old boat-hook like that."
"Malays, aren't they?" said Wilderspin.
"Don't know," said Bailey. "I thought one called all that sort of
manner Lascar."
Then he began to tell Wilderspin what he knew of the private affairs
of the houseboat, _Purple Emperor_. "Funny," he said, "how these
people come from all points of the compass--from Oxford and Windsor,
from Asia and Africa--and gather and pass opposite the window just
to entertain me. One man floated out of the infinite the day before
yesterday, caught one perfect crab opposite, lost and recovered a
scull, and passed on again. Probably he will never come into my life
again. So far as I am concerned, he has lived and had his little
troubles, perhaps thirty--perhaps forty--years on the earth, merely
to make an ass of himself for three minutes in front of my window.
Wonderful thing, Wilderspin, if you come to think of it."
"Yes," said Wilderspin; "_isn't_ it?"
A day or two after this Bailey had a brilliant morning. Indeed,
towards the end of the affair, it became almost as exciting as any
window show very well could be. We will, however, begin at the
beginning.
Bailey was all alone in the house, for his housekeeper had gone into
the town three miles away to pay bills, and the servant had her
holiday. The morning began dull. A canoe went up about half-past nine,
and later a boat-load of camping men came down. But this was mere
margin. Things became cheerful about ten o'clock.
It began with something white fluttering in the remote distance where
the three poplars marked the river bend. "Pocket-handkerchief," said
Bailey, when he saw it "No. Too big! Flag perhaps."
However, it was not a flag, for it jumped about. "Man in whites
running fast, and this way," said Bailey. "That's luck! But his whites
are precious loose!"
Then a singular thing happened. There was a minute pink gleam among
the dark trees in the distance, and a little puff of pale grey that
began to drift and vanish eastward. The man in white jumped and
continued running. Presently the report of the shot arrived.
"What the devil!" said Bailey. "Looks as if someone was shooting at
him."
He sat up stiffly and stared hard. The white figure was coming along
the pathway through the corn. "It's one of those niggers from the
Fitzgibbon's," said Bailey; "or may I be hanged! I wonder why he keeps
sawing with his arm."
Then three other figures became indistinctly visible against the dark
background of the trees.
Abruptly on the opposite bank a man walked into the picture. He was
black-bearded, dressed in flannels, had a red belt, and a vast grey
felt hat. He walked, leaning very much forward and with his hands
swinging before him. Behind him one could see the grass swept by the
towing-rope of the boat he was dragging. He was steadfastly regarding
the white figure that was hurrying through the corn. Suddenly he
stopped. Then, with a peculiar gesture, Bailey could see that he began
pulling in the tow-rope hand over hand. Over the water could be heard
the voices of the people in the still invisible boat.
"What are you after, Hagshot?" said someone.
The individual with the red belt shouted something that was inaudible,
and went on lugging in the rope, looking over his shoulder at the
advancing white figure as he did so. He came down the bank, and the
rope bent a lane among the reeds and lashed the water between his
pulls.
Then just the bows of the boat came into view, with the towing-mast
and a tall, fair-haired man standing up and trying to see over the
bank. The boat bumped unexpectedly among the reeds, and the tall,
fair-haired man disappeared suddenly, having apparently fallen back
into the invisible part of the boat. There was a curse and some
indistinct laughter. Hagshot did not laugh, but hastily clambered into
the boat and pushed off. Abruptly the boat passed out of Bailey's
sight.
But it was still audible. The melody of voices suggested that its
occupants were busy telling each other what to do.
The running figure was drawing near the bank. Bailey could now see
clearly that it was one of Fitzgibbon's Orientals, and began to
realise what the sinuous thing the man carried in his hand might
be. Three other men followed one another through the corn, and the
foremost carried what was probably the gun. They were perhaps two
hundred yards or more behind the Malay.
"It's a man hunt, by all that's holy!" said Bailey.