was a shade less shy than himself, and they went a monosyllabic walk
together (for of course Flushington did not row, or take up athletics in
any form); if it was wet, he read the papers and magazines at the Union,
and in the evenings after hall, he studied 'general literature'--a
graceful periphrasis for novels--or laboriously picked out a sonata or a
nocturne upon his piano, a habit which had not tended to increase his
popularity.
Fortunately for Flushington, he had no gyp, or his life would have been
a burden to him, and with his bedmaker he was rather a favourite, as a
'gentleman what gave no trouble'--which meant that when he observed his
sherry sinking like the water in a lock when the sluices are up, he was
too delicate to refer to the phenomenon in any way.
One afternoon when Flushington was engaged over his modest luncheon of
bread and butter, potted meat, and lemonade, he suddenly became aware of
a sound of unusual voices and a strange flutter of female dresses on the
winding stone staircase outside--and was instantly overcome with a cold
dread.
Now, although there were certainly ladies coming upstairs, there was no
reason for alarm; they were probably friends of the man who kept
opposite, and was always having his people up. But Flushington had one
of those odd presentiments, so familiar to nervous persons, that
something unpleasant was at hand; he could not imagine who these ladies
might be, but he knew instinctively that they were coming to _him_!
If he could only be sure that his outer oak was safely latched! He rose
from his chair with wild ideas of rushing to see, of retreating to his
bedroom, and hiding under the bed until they had gone.
Too late! the dresses were rustling now in his very passage; there was a
pause evidently before his inner door, a few faint and smothered laughs,
some little feminine coughs, then--two taps.
Flushington stood still for a moment, feeling like a caged animal; he
had thoughts, even then, of concealment--was there time to get under the
sofa? No, it would be too dreadful if the visitors, whoever they were,
were to discover him in so unusual a situation.
So he ran back to his chair and sat down before crying 'Come in' in a
faint voice. He _did_ wish he had been reading anything but the work of
M. Zola, which was propped up in front of him, but there was no time to
put it away.
Your mild man often has a taste for seeing the less reputable side of
life in a safe and second-hand way, and Flushington would toil manfully
through the most realistic descriptions without turning a hair; now and
then he looked out a word in the dictionary, and when it was not to be
found there--and it generally wasn't--he had a sense almost of injury.
But there was a strong fascination for him in experiencing the
sensation of a kind of intellectual orgie, for he knew enough of the
language to be aware that the incidents frequently bordered on the
improper, even while it was not exactly clear in what the impropriety
consisted.
As he said 'Come in,' the door opened, and his heart seemed to stop, and
all the blood in it rushed violently up to his head, as a large lady
came sweeping in, her face rippling with a broad smile of affection.
She horrified Flushington, who knew nobody with the smallest claim to
smile at him so expansively as that, and he drank lemonade to conceal
his confusion.
'You don't know me, my dear Frank,' she said easily; 'why of course you
don't; how should you? Well, I'm (for goodness sake, my dear boy, don't
look so dreadfully frightened, I don't want to eat you!) I'm your
aunt--your Aunt Amelia, you know me now--from Australia, you know!'
This was a severe shock to Flushington, who had not even known he
possessed such a relative anywhere; all he could say just then was, 'Oh,
_are_ you?' which he felt at the time was not quite the welcome to give
an aunt who had come all the way from the Antipodes.
'Yes, that I am!' she said cheerily, 'but that's not all. I've another
surprise for you--the dear girls would insist upon coming up too, to see
their grand college cousin; they're just outside. I'll call them in,
shall I?'
And in another second Flushington's small room was overrun by a horde of
female relatives, while he could only look on and gasp.
They were pretty girls too, most of them, but that only frightened him
more; he did not mind plain women half so much; some of them looked
bright and clever as well, and a combination of beauty and intellect
always reduced him to a condition of hopeless imbecility.
He had never forgotten one occasion on which he had been captured and
introduced to a charming young lady from Newnham, and all he could do
was to back feebly into a corner, murmuring 'Thank you' repeatedly.
He showed himself to scarcely more advantage now, as his aunt proceeded
to single out one girl after another. 'We needn't have any formal
nonsense between cousins,' she said; 'you know all their names already,
I dare say. This is Milly, and that's Jane; and here's Flora, and Kitty,
and Margaret, and this is my little Thomasina, keeping close to mamma,
as usual.'
Poor Flushington ducked blindly in the various directions at the mention
of each name, and then collectively to all; he had not sufficient
presence of mind to offer them chairs, or cake, or anything, and
besides, there was not nearly enough for that multitude.
Meanwhile his aunt had spread herself comfortably out in his only
arm-chair, and was untying her bonnet-strings, while she beamed at him
until he was ready to expire with embarrassment. 'I _do_ think, Frankie
dear,' she observed at last, 'that when an old auntie all the way from
Australia takes the trouble to come and see you like this, the
least--the very _least_ you could do would be to give her one little
kiss.'
She seemed so hurt by the omission, that Flushington dared not refuse;
he staggered up and kissed her somewhere upon her face--after which he
did not know which way to look, so terribly afraid was he that the same
ceremony might have to be gone through with all the cousins, and he
could _not_ have survived that.
Happily for him, however, they did not appear to expect it, and he
balanced a chair on its hind legs and, resting one knee upon it, waited
for them to begin a conversation, for he could not think of a single
apposite remark himself.
His aunt came to his rescue. 'You don't ask after your Uncle
Samuel--have you forgotten all the beetles and things he used to send
you?' she said reprovingly.
'No,' said Flushington, to whom Uncle Samuel was another revelation.
'How is the beetle--I mean, how is Uncle Samuel? Quite well, I hope?'
'Only tolerably so, Frank, thank you; as well as could be expected after
his loss.'
'I didn't hear of that,' said Flushington, catching at this
conversational rope in despair. 'Was it--did he lose much?'
'I was not referring to a money loss,' she said, and her glance was
stony for the moment; 'I was (as I think you might have guessed)
referring to the death of your cousin John.'
And Flushington, who had begun to feel his first agonies abating, had a
terrible relapse at this unhappy mistake; he stammered something about
it being very sad indeed, and then, wondering why no one had ever kept
him better posted as to his relations, he resolved that he would not
betray his ignorance by any further inquiries.
But his aunt was evidently wounded afresh. 'I ought to have known,' she
said, and shook her head pathetically; 'they soon forget us when we
leave the old country--and yet I did think, too, my own sister's son
would remember his cousin's death! Well, well, my loves, we must teach
him to know us better now we have the opportunity. Frankie dear, the
girls and I expect you to take us about everywhere and show us all the
sights; or what's the use of having a nephew at Cambridge University,
you know.'
Flushington had a horrible mental vision of himself careering all over
Cambridge at the head of a long procession of female relatives, a
fearful prospect for so shy a man. 'Shall you be here long?' he asked.
'Oh, only a week or so; we're at the "Bull," very near you; and so we
can always be popping in on you. And now, Frankie, my boy, will you
think your aunt a very bold beggar if she asks you to give us a little
something to eat? We wouldn't wait for lunch, the dear children were so
impatient, and we're all _ravenous_! We all thought, the girls and I
(didn't you, dears?) that it would be such fun lunching with a real
college student in his own room.'
'Oh,' protested Flushington, 'I assure you there's nothing so
extraordinary in it, and--and the fact is, I'm afraid there's very
little for you to eat, and the kitchens and the buttery are closed by
this time.' He said this at a venture, for he felt quite unequal to
facing the college cook and ordering lunch from that tremendous
personage--he would far rather order it from his tutor even.
'But,' he added, touched by the little cry of disappointment which the
girls made in spite of themselves, 'if you don't mind potted
ham--there's some left in the bottom of this tin, and there's some bread
and an inch of butter, and a little marmalade and a few milk
biscuits--and there _was_ some sherry this morning!'
His cousins declared merrily that they were so hungry they would enjoy
anything, and so they sat round the table and poor Flushington served
out meagre rations to them of all the provisions he could hunt up, even
to his figs and his French plums. It was like a shipwreck, he thought
drearily. There was not nearly enough to go round, and they lunched with
evident disillusionment, thinking that the college luxury of which they
had heard so much had been sadly exaggerated.
During the meal the aunt began to study Flushington's features with
affectionate interest. 'There's a strong look of poor dear Simon about
him when he smiles,' she said, looking at him through her gold
double-glasses. 'There, did you catch it, girls? Just his mother's
profile! Turn your face a leetle more to the window; I want to get the
light on your nose, Frankie; _now_ don't you see the likeness to your
aunt's portrait at Gumtree Creek, girls?'
And Flushington had to sit still with all the girls' charming eyes fixed
critically upon his crimson countenance, until he would have given
worlds to be able to slide down under the table and evade them, but of
course he was obliged to remain above.
'He's got dear Caroline's nose!' the aunt announced triumphantly, and
the cousins were agreed that he certainly had Caroline's nose--which
made him feel vaguely that he ought at least to _offer_ to return it.
Presently the youngest and prettiest of the girls whispered to her
mother, who laughed indulgently. 'Why, you baby,' she said, 'what do you
think this silly child wants me to ask you, Frankie? She says she would
so like to see how you look in your college robes and that odd
four-cornered hat you all wear. Will you put them on, just to please
her?'
And he had to put them on and walk slowly up and down the room in his
cap and gown, feeling all the time that he was making a dismal display
of himself, and that the girls were plainly disappointed, for they
admitted that somehow they had fancied the academical costume would have
been more becoming.
After this came a hotly-sustained catechism upon his studies, his
amusements, his friends, and his mode of life generally, and the
aunt--who by this time felt the potted ham beginning to disagree with
her--seemed to be unfavourably impressed by the answers she obtained.
This was particularly the case when to the question 'what church he
attended,' he replied that he attended none, as he was always regular at
chapel: for the aunt was disappointed to find her nephew a Dissenter,
and said as much; while Flushington, though he saw the misunderstanding,
was far too shy and too miserable to explain it.
The cousins by this time were clustered together, whispering and
laughing over little private jokes, and he, after the manner of
sensitive men, of course concluded they were laughing at _him_, and
perhaps on this occasion he was not mistaken.
He stood by the fireplace, growing hotter and hotter every second,
inwardly cursing his whole race, and wishing that his father had been a
foundling. What would he have to do next? take all his people out for a
walk. He trembled at the idea. He would have to pass through the court
with them, under the eyes of the men who were loitering about the grass
plots before going down to the boats; through the open window he could
hear their voices, and the clash they made as they fenced with
walking-sticks.
As he stood there, dumb and miserable, he heard another tap at his
door--a feeble one this time.
'Why,' cried his aunt, 'that must be poor old Sophy at last--you may not
remember old Sophy, Frankie; you were quite a baby when she came out to
us; but she remembers _you_, and begged so hard to be allowed to come
and see you. Don't keep her standing outside. Come in, Sophy; it's quite
right; Master Frankie is here!'
And at this a very old person in a black bonnet came in, and was
overcome by emotion at the first sight of Flushington. 'To think,' she
quavered, 'to think as my dim old eyes should live to see the child I've
dandled times and again on my lap growed out into a college gentleman!'
Whereupon she hugged Flushington respectfully, and wept copiously upon
his shoulder, which made him almost cataleptic.
But as she grew calmer, she became more critical, even confessing a
certain feeling of disappointment with Flushington. He had not filled
out, she declared, so fine as he'd promised to fill out. And when she
began to drag up reminiscences of his early youth, asking if he
recollected how he wouldn't be washed unless they first put his little
spotted wooden horse on the washstand, and how they had to bribe him
with a penny trumpet to take his castor oil, and how fond he used to be
of senna tea, Flushington felt that he must seem more of a fool than
ever!
This was quite bad enough, but at last the girls began to be restless,
and there being no efforts made to entertain them, amused themselves by
exploring their cousin's rooms and exclaiming at everything they saw;
admiring his pipes and his umbrella rack, his buffalo horns and his tin
heraldic shields, and his quaint wooden kettle-holder, until they came
round to his French novel, and, as they were healthy-minded Colonial
girls, with a limited knowledge of Parisian literature, they pounced
upon it directly, and wanted Flushington to tell them what it was all
about.
'Yes, Frankie, tell us,' the aunt struck in as he faltered; 'I'm always
glad for the girls to know of any nice foreign works, as they've really
improved wonderfully in their French lately.'
There are French novels, no doubt, of which it would be practicable and
pleasant to give a general idea to one's aunt, but they are not
numerous, and this particular book did not chance to be one of them.
So this demand threw him into a cold perspiration; he had not presence
of mind to prevaricate or invent, and he would probably have committed
himself in some deplorable manner, if just at that moment there had not
happened to come another tap at the door, or rather a sharp rattle, as
if with the end of something wooden.
Flushington's head swam with horror at this third interruption; he was
prepared for anything now--another aunt, say from Greenland's icy
mountains, or India's coral strand, with a fresh relay of female
cousins, or a staff of aged family retainers who had washed him in early
infancy: he sat there cowering.
But when the door opened, a tall, fair, good-looking young fellow in a
boating-straw and flannels, and carrying a tennis racket, burst
impulsively in. 'Oh, I say,' he began, 'you don't happen to have heard
or seen anything of--oh, beg pardon, didn't see, you know,' he added, as
he noticed the extraordinary fact that Flushington had people up.
'Oh--er--let me introduce you,' said Flushington, with a vague notion
that this was the right thing to do; 'Mr. Lushington--Mrs. (no, I don't
know her name)--my aunt ... my cousins!'
The young man, who had just been about to retire, bowed and stared with
sudden surprise. 'Do you know,' he said slowly in an undertone to the
other, 'do you know that I can't help fancying there's some mistake--are
you sure that's not _my_ aunt you've got hold of there?'
'Oh,' whispered Flushington, catching at this unexpected hope, 'do you
really think so? She seems so certain she belongs to me!'
'Well,' said the new-comer, 'I only know I have an aunt and cousins I've
never seen who were coming up some time this week--do these ladies
happen to come from the Colonies, by the way?'
'Yes, yes!' cried Flushington, eagerly; 'it's all right, they belong to
you; and, I say, _do_ take them away; I can't bear it any longer!'
'Now, now, what's this whispering, Frankie?' cried the aunt; 'not very
polite, I must say!'
'He says,' explained Flushington, 'he says it's all a mistake, and--and
you're not my aunt at all!'
'Oh, indeed, _does_ he?' she replied, drawing herself together with
dignity; 'and may I ask who is this gentleman who knows so much about
our family--I didn't catch the name?'
'My name is Lushington--Frank Lushington,' he said.
'Then--who are _you_?' she demanded, turning upon the unfortunate owner
of the rooms; 'answer me, I insist upon it!'
'Me?' he stammered, 'I'm Francis Flushington. I--I'm very sorry--but I
can't help it!'
'Why--why--then you're no nephew of _mine_, sir!' cried the aunt.
'Thank you very much,' said Flushington, with positive gratitude.
'But,' she said, 'I want to know _why_ I have been allowed to deceive
myself in this way. Perhaps, sir, you will kindly explain?'
'What's the good of asking _me_?' protested Flushington; 'I haven't an
idea why!'
'I think I see,' put in her genuine nephew; 'you see, there isn't much
light on the staircase outside, and you must have taken the
"Flushington" over his oak to be "F. Lushington," and gone straight in,
you know. They told me at the lodge that some ladies had been asking for
me, and so when I didn't find you in my rooms, I thought I'd look in
here on the chance--and here you all are, eh?'
But the aunt was annoyed to find that she had been pouring out all her
pent-up affection over a perfect stranger, and had eaten his lunch into
the bargain. She almost feared she had put herself in a slightly
ridiculous position, and this, of course, made her feel very angry with
Flushington.
'Yes, yes, yes!' she said excitedly, 'that's all very well; but why did
he deliberately encourage me in my mistake?'
'How was I to know it _was_ a mistake?' pleaded Flushington. 'You told
me you were my aunt from Australia; for all I know Australia may be
overrun with my aunts. I supposed you knew best.'
'But you asked affectionately after Samuel,' she persisted; 'you must
have had some object in humouring my mistake.'
'You told me to ask after him, and I did,' said Flushington; 'what else
could I do?'
'No, sir,' she said, rising in her wrath; 'it was a most ungentlemanly
and heartless practical joke on your part, and--and I shall not listen
to further excuses.'
'Oh, good gracious!' Flushington almost whimpered; 'a practical joke!
_me_, oh, it really is _too_ bad!'
'My dear aunt,' Lushington assured her, 'he's quite incapable of such a
thing; it's a mistake on both sides; he wouldn't wish to intercept
another fellow's aunt.'
'I wouldn't do such a thing for worlds!' protested Flushington,
sincerely enough; he would not have robbed a fellow creature of a single
relation of the remotest degree; and as for carrying off an aunt and a
complete set of female cousins, he would have blushed (and, in fact, did
blush) at the bare suspicion.
The cousins themselves had been laughing and whispering together all
this time, regarding their new relation with shy admiration, very
different from the manner in which they had looked at poor Flushington;
the old nurse, too, was overjoyed at the exchange, and now declared that
from the minute she set eyes on Flushington, she had felt something
inside tell her that her Master Frank would never have turned out so
undersized as _him_!
'Well,' said the aunt, mollified at last, 'you must forgive us for
having disturbed you like this, Mr. a--Flushington' (the unfortunate man
murmured that he did not mind it _now_); 'and now, Frank, my boy, I
should like the girls to see _your_ rooms.'
'Come along then,' said he. 'Will you let me give you something to
eat?--I'll run down and see what they can let me have; and perhaps
you'll kindly help me to lay the cloth; _I_ never can lay the thing
straight myself, and my old bedmaker's out of the way, as usual.'
The girls looked dubiously at one another--they were frightfully hungry
still; at last the eldest, out of pure consideration for Flushington's
feelings, said, 'Thank you very much, Cousin Frank--but your friend has
kindly given us some lunch already.'
'Oh!' he said, 'has he though? That's really uncommonly good of you, old
chap.'
But Flushington's modesty did not allow him to accept undeserved
gratitude. 'I say,' he whispered, taking the other aside, 'I gave them
what I could, but I'm afraid it--it wasn't much of a lunch.'
Lushington made a mental note that he would repeat his invitation when
he had got his cousins outside. 'Well, look here,' he said, 'will you
come and help me to row the ladies up to Byron's Pool--say in an hour
from this--and we'll all come back and have a little dinner in my rooms,
eh?'
'Yes, Mr. Flushington, do--do come,' the girls all entreated him, 'just
to show you forgive us for taking possession of you like this.'
But Flushington wriggled out of it somehow. He couldn't come, he said
uncomfortably; he had an engagement. He had nothing of the kind, but he
felt that he had had quite enough female society for one day.
They did not press him, and he was heartily glad when the last of his
temporary relations had filed out of his little room, leaving him
reminiscences of a terrible half-hour which caused him to be extremely
careful for months after not to lunch without ascertaining previously
that his outer door was securely sported. But never again did a solitary
hungry aunt invade his solitude.
_THE SIREN._
Long long ago, a siren lived all alone upon a rocky little island far
out in the Southern Ocean. She may have been the youngest and most
beautiful of the original three sirens, driven by her sisters' jealousy,
or her own weariness of their society, to seek this distant home; or she
may have lived there in solitude from the beginning.
[Illustration]
But she was not unhappy; all she cared about was the admiration and
worship of mortal men, and these were hers whenever she wished, for she
had only to sing, and her exquisite voice would float away over the
waters, until it reached some passing vessel, and then every one that
heard was seized instantly with the irresistible longing to hasten to
her isle and throw himself adoringly at her feet.
One day as she sat upon a low headland, looking earnestly out over the
sparkling blue-green water before her, and hoping to discover the peak
of some far-off sail on the hazy sea-line, she was startled by a sound
she had never heard before--the grating of a boat's keel on the pebbles
in the little creek at her side.
She had been too much absorbed in watching for distant ships to notice
that a small bark had been gliding round the other side of her island,
but now, as she glanced round, she saw that the stranger who had guided
it was already jumping ashore and securing his boat.
Evidently she had not attracted him there, for she had been too indolent
to sing of late, and he did not seem even to have seen her, or to have
landed from any other motive than curiosity.
He was quite young, gallant-looking and sunburnt, with brown hair
curling over his forehead, an open face and honest grey eyes. And as she
looked at him, the fancy came to her that she would like to question him
and hear his voice; she would find out, if she could, what manner of
beings these mortals were over whom she possessed so strange a power.
Never before had such a thought entered her mind, notwithstanding that
she had seen many mortals of every age and rank, from captain to the
lowest galley slave; but then she had only seen them under the influence
of her magical voice, when they were struck dumb and motionless, after
which--except as proofs of her power--they did not interest her.
But this stranger was still free--so long as she did not choose to
enslave him; and for some reason she did not choose to do so just yet.