pronounced, spread across his gums till his face looked as if it were
cut in two.
"I can let you have half a sovereign," Aunty suggested.
"Oh, thank you; it's of no consequence," Gussie said, making a gesture
of refusal. He walked about the room as if hurriedly seeking for
something he never found.
Auntie, with her unintelligent gaze divided between his movements and
the glove which so reluctantly covered her arm, offered a tardy
explanation.
"I never lend money," she said. "It was my father's dying request that
I never should. I owe it to him to regard it."
"Quite so; of course," Gussie said. "The matter just came into my head.
I merely mentioned it. Pray don't give it a thought."
As they drove to the theatre, Auntie remarked that she should insist on
paying for her ticket and her share of the cab, a suggestion at which
Gussie and Grace were hospitably offended. She asked, then, if the
house was safe, left with only the maid-servants to protect it. In
order to reassure her, Augustus informed her that he was intending to
go home once in the course of the evening to make sure that things were
all right.
"Not that it matters to me," Auntie told him; "for I have brought my
valuables with me--jewellery and money, too. I always take them with
me, in strange places. I could never enjoy the play if my mind were not
at rest. I wear a bag concealed in the skirt of my dress on purpose."
"Ah! I wish I could make Grace as thoughtful!" Gussie said.
"Give me Auntie's money and jewels, then see!" Grace cried.
"And I suppose you go to bed with them, too?" Gussie admiringly
inquired. "Grace has never so much as carried up the plate-basket."
He was quite right. Auntie did go to bed with them, always putting the
bag containing them under her pillow.
"A wise precaution!" said Gussie.
"I'm a heavy sleeper," Auntie explained. "A robber might break in and
take my property, and I never hear him; but let him touch the pillow
beneath my head, and I'm wide awake on the moment."
"Yes, but--" said Augustus Mellish, and smiled, "a few drops of
chloroform on a handkerchief held over your face, Auntie, and where
would you and your jewellery be then?"
They were at the theatre, by that time, and Auntie did not answer. But
when she went to bed that night she thought of what Grace's husband had
said. She had a little difficulty with breathing, being a stout woman,
and a horror of suffocation. The idea of that handkerchief held over
her face was terrible. She loved her money and her jewels, but loved
more her comfort and her life.
"Once they stopped my breath, I should never wake up again!" she said
to herself; and, deciding to alter her usual procedure, she returned
her treasure from the bag hidden in her skirts to her jewel-case.
The play had been a moving one. Grace, very susceptible to emotion, had
laughed and cried beside her; but Auntie was a phlegmatic person. The
comedy was just make-believe. She thought more, as she undressed, of
Augustus's request for a loan than of the heart-stirring episodes of
the drama. She had been wise not to begin lending him money, but to say
at once, straight out, "_No._" He had asked for only a few pounds; if
she had given them, he would have gone on to ask for more, in all
probability. Auntie liked Grace well enough, rather better than most
people, perhaps; but Grace had pleased herself in getting married; the
man she had taken must keep her. He had no claim on Grace's Auntie.
With such thoughts in her mind, as soon as her head touched the pillow,
she slept.
She awoke with a sickly, suffocating smell in her nostrils; and her
eyes opened wide upon a face bent above her own. She had slept with a
small lamp burning beside her, and by its dim light it seemed to her
that the face was black.
As she gazed, the face receded. Its owner drew backwards, pulling one
empty hand from beneath her pillow. The other hand held the
handkerchief whose odour she had felt upon mouth and nostrils.
Auntie flew up in bed. "Burglar!" she cried.
It was the only word spoken between them. The whole incident was over
in a half-minute. By the time that epithet had burst without volition
from her lips the robber, with his black-veiled face, had slunk to the
door and was gone.
With an agility she had not displayed since girlhood, Auntie sprang
from the bed, and, clutching the bag containing her money and jewels,
furiously rang the bell.
Mrs Mellish, in her nightgown, came running into the room.
"Oh, Auntie! Are you ill? Are you on fire?" she cried.
The stout lady, strengthless and breathless, was lying in a chair, the
jewel-case clasped laxly with one arm.
"A robber has been here," she gasped. "A robber, with black on his
face, and a chloroformed handkerchief."
"Oh, Auntie! Auntie! Never!"
"Where is your husband? Is he in your room?"
No. For Augustus, ever a restless sleeper, had thought he heard
something stirring in the room beneath, and, later, a footstep on the
stair. He had risen, therefore, had taken the pistol, which always lay
loaded by his side, and gone down to investigate.
Auntie opened her mouth to speak, but closed it without a sound; her
eyes, with their most vacant stare, were turned upon her niece; she
gathered her underlip loosely beneath her teeth.
It was not until the servants, also aroused by the bell, but having
waited to dress, came to Auntie's room, that Mrs Mellish was at liberty
to run down to seek her husband.
There was no doubt about the house having been entered, she said, on
her return; Auntie had by no means _dreamt_ the burglar.
("No!" interpolated Auntie, with a solemnly emphatic shake of the
head.)
A window broken in the kitchen, and a wide-open sash had showed the
exploring Gussie the means of ingress. In the dining-room it was
evident that a couple of glasses of brandy had been drunk, but none of
the silver on the sideboard had been touched. Too clearly, Auntie and
her possessions had been the objects of the attempt.
Auntie nodded gloomy affirmation, trembling and gasping in her chair.
Where was Gussie, she asked; and showed relief and satisfaction when
told he had gone to give notice of the affair to the police. But not
even the promise that the servants and Grace would sit beside her and
watch her while she slept would induce the poor lady to go to bed
again.
"Not in this house. Never again in this house," she protested.
And even when morning brought a cessation of panic and a certain sense
of security to all, she could not be persuaded to change her mind.
"I should die if I ever trusted myself to fall asleep under this roof
again," she said. "Let me get away from it as soon as possible. I am
fifty years of age, but I've never had a bad shock before in my life. I
won't risk a second."
The swarthy, fat, foolish face was pale and flabby and aged from the
night's adventure and the sleepless hours following.
"Auntie, I am sure you are not well enough to travel," Grace said. But,
with a grim determination, Auntie persisted.
"The first train. I should like to get away by the very first."
"It isn't our fault, remember," Grace said, firing up. "It isn't as if
we _arranged_ a burglary for you, Auntie."
There was a train at 10.15 a.m., and of this Auntie would avail
herself.
No policeman came to the house. Augustus did not return.
"He and the detectives have got on a track, and are following it up,"
his wife said. "Trust Gussie!"
When the ladies were about to sit down to breakfast, and still the
master of the house had not returned, Grace was a little surprised. The
neighbour who had played bridge with them came in. He had heard of the
burglary, and was come to offer assistance, he said. He picked up a
couple of newspapers lying by Mr Mellish's empty plate.
"You let those alone! Gussie hasn't seen them yet," Gussie's wife said.
The Mellishes were on terms of great intimacy with the neighbour.
"I'll take them, all the same," he laughed. "Send Gus to me for them if
he wants them."
"I tell you what! I think I'll just 'phone up to the office to see if
Gussie's there," Grace said. "I don't see the fun of being kept in the
dark like this. I should like to know what's going on, and if they've
caught anyone."
The face of the friendly neighbour changed as she disappeared to carry
out this intention. He walked close to Auntie and whispered in her ear:
"Don't let her get hold of a newspaper," he said. "There's disagreeable
news. I heard it last night. Mellish has got into a scrape--forgery,
they say. I hope to heaven he's got away--H-s-s-sh!"
There was no need of the caution. Auntie, with the grand talent for
silence which distinguished her, sat with a sucked-in lip looking
heavily after the retreating neighbour, when Grace returned. Grace,
bright and pretty in her neat morning blouse, made a laughing dash at
the papers in the neighbour's hand. He flourished them a moment above
her head and retired.
"Gussie's not at the office," Mrs Mellish said. "He's on the track of
your burglar, Auntie, you bet. He'll catch him, too! You'll be wanted
to identify him; could you swear to him, do you think?"
Auntie very hurriedly declared her inability to do this. "All the upper
part of his face was covered," she said.
But she thought of a black-shaved chin below the mask, and a jaw that
had worked silently, in a way of late familiar to her; and she found
herself quite unable to do justice to her niece's eggs and bacon.
* * * * *
At the door of the first-class railway compartment by which Auntie was
to travel Grace stood.
"Gussie will be furious when he comes back and finds you gone," she
said. "He'll catch the man, to the deadest certainty. He's got the
brains of the whole police force in his own head. You should have
stayed to enjoy the excitement."
Auntie, whitened and flabby-looking under her smart violet toque,
reiterated the statement that she could not have stayed another night.
"It's been a great shock. I feel as if I might never recover from it;
and I wish with all my heart I had never come," she said.
"Well, since you wish it, I wish it, too," Grace retorted, kindling.
"We must console ourselves that it has not been for long, and try to
forget all about it."
"I shall be glad to be back in my own home," Auntie said.
She looked so changed from the well-satisfied, prosperous Auntie whom
Grace had welcomed to her home two days before, that Mrs Mellish's
resentment faded as she regarded her.
"You are sure you like best to travel alone?" she asked her, with
anxious kindness.
Yes. Auntie preferred her own company. If a man got in at any of the
stations, she said, so upset were her nerves, she would certainly be
ill with the fright.
So Mrs Mellish found the guard and intimated to him that the lady
wished to be undisturbed. Auntie stopped him when, in his officious
zeal, he was about to lock the carriage door.
"I can't bear the feeling of being locked in," she said. "It makes me
lose my breath."
She leaned out of the window, and kissed her niece with more
demonstrativeness than was her custom. "You know my address if
you--want anything. Good-bye," she said.
"Good-bye," Grace said, and shook a hand at the window. "Don't forget
to eat your sandwiches--you had no breakfast, you know. You've got some
brandy-and-water in your flask, remember. Take care of yourself.
Good-bye."
"Silly old goose! Making such a fuss, at her age!" she said to herself
as she walked away. "Well, after all, it's a relief she's gone. I'm
sure I never wanted her. It was Gussie's idea, not mine."
Evidently the story of the burglary had got about. Mrs Mellish noticed
several people turning to look at her with unwonted interest as she
walked along.
On inquiring of the servants, she found the master had not returned.
On his dressing-table, as she took off her hat, she noticed a neat
little oblong parcel lying. It was addressed in Augustus's writing, "To
my darling Henry, with all his father's love."
Grace smiled to herself. "Gussie remembered the paint-box," she said.
"He never forgets the boy."
She took the little parcel, and posted it to her son.
As the train sped on, Auntie, expanding herself in her corner, felt a
revival of health and spirits.
She had escaped, thanks be to God. But for her mercifully awakening
before the chloroform had taken effect, she would at the present moment
be lying a corpse on the visitors' bed of her niece's house, done to
death by her niece's husband. Once under the chloroform--she was
certain of it--she could not have revived.
She could not endure to think of the house in which she had been
attacked, and on which she had now mercifully been permitted to turn
her back. The sun had shone brightly within its spotless windows this
morning; fresh flowers had decked the breakfast-table; a neat servant
had brought in the coffee. Grace, at her end of the table, pretty and
rosy and young, had talked away, only pleasantly excited by the night's
adventure, in her quick, alert manner. And over it all was hanging this
cloud of ruin, horror, disgrace! Let Auntie banish the ever-recurring
picture, if possible, from her mind. Surely she had done well to get
away!
But as the train sped on, Grace's image, pretty, brisk, capable,
floated persistently before her eyes. She heard her quick speech, her
laugh. She was Auntie's own flesh and blood--Alfred's daughter. Some
people, who did not appreciate how keenly she felt discomfort, and how
dreadfully anything at all unpleasant upset her, might say she should
have stayed at Grace's side, and not left her alone to face what was
coming: they might say it to each other, that is. No one had the right
to censure Auntie.
"What good could I do? I should only have been in the way," she said;
"best to keep out of it all."
The train sped on. At every station the attentive guard walked by,
turned an observant eye, touched his cap. The old girl was good for
two-and-six at the journey's end, perhaps; also, perhaps, she would
thank him and give him nothing. A guard can never be sure. Still--!
How could Grace, who had been such a nice bright little girl, and who
used to go to Auntie for her holidays, years ago, and give very little
trouble, considering, have tied herself to that mouthing black and
white man, with his restless little shaking hands, endlessly fidgeting?
When she partook of a late supper Auntie sometimes had bad dreams, and
awoke with her heart beating into her mouth. She knew what her
nightmare would be for the future!
There were Grace's sandwiches. To divert her thoughts she took the
little packet from the bag which held her money and jewels, and drew
out also her silver flask. Years ago her doctor had told her never to
travel without a little brandy. She looked at the sandwiches, unscrewed
the flask, but found sight and scent to be enough that morning, and put
both aside.
It had seemed a long journey, but now London was near. They stopped at
Broxbourne. Auntie was not quite sure if this station they flew by was
Ponder's End or Angel Road; she put her head out of the window to try
to catch the name on the lamps and benches, failed to do so, and lay
back again in her corner.
What was that? A stirring, a bulging outward of the valances of the
opposite seat. Something was emerging. A man. Dragging himself forth on
his stomach, gathering himself up to his hands and knees, rising to his
full height, collapsing, a dusty, degraded bundle of clothes, in the
further corner of the carriage.
"Guard!" shrieked Auntie. "Gua----!"
The word died on her stiff blue lips. She, too, collapsed in her
corner, and lay stonily staring at the face staring back at her: a face
with desperation in its hunted eyes, with black chin, and chalk-white
cheek and brow, and a mouth restlessly mumbling with no sound.
Beside the man, on the flat-topped division of the seat, a pistol lay;
but the fingers of the small white hand which held it were nerveless.
In his bearing was no menace--only the unstrung droop of despair.
So they faced each other without a word--the man and woman who for the
last two days had played the _roles_ of attentive host and gratified
guest.
And the train sped on. Away from the sunny little house, the dainty,
capable housewife, the security, the shelter, the heaven of home; away
from peace and guiltlessness; away from a life in which the "gnat-like
buzzings of little cares" had once been its heaviest burden, to a life
in death of danger, of degradation, of bottomless despair.
As the train slackened speed for the next station, the man arose,
dropped the pistol in his pocket; his hand stole out to the handle of
the door. Cautiously he looked forth over flat landscape of building
site, of brickfield, of the huge tanks and lush vegetation of sewage
farms. Gently he pushed the door a little open, and, holding it,
paused, as more slowly, slower still the train sped on.
There was a shrinking touch upon his arm, and Auntie, livid, heavily
breathing, pointed to the silver flask filled with brandy, to the
parcel of sandwiches Grace had cut for her, chatting happily the while,
that morning. The man took them without a word, and pushed them in the
pocket of his coat.
The train was slackening still. Auntie grasped her bag, with weak,
half-paralysed fingers drew out the bag of money and jewels for which
the man had groped last night beneath her pillow, put it in his hand.
There came a sound in Augustus Mellish's throat that might have been a
sob or a strangled word; then the door opened wider; a moment, and he
had slipped from sight.
The station was passed, and the train sped on, bearing Auntie, sole
occupant of the carriage, her journey nearly done.
At St Pancras the guard, the chances of half-crown or no half-crown
still agitating his mind, came to the door of the first-class carriage
he had taken under his special supervision. He touched his cap with a
smile expressive of felicitation that, thanks to his unremitting care,
the lady had reached the end of her travels undisturbed and in peace
from intrusion.
But Auntie was lying back in her corner, dead.
WILLY AND I
When we were little--Willy and I--oh, such a weary long year ago!--we
lived in a big house, in a wide, quiet street in the old town of
Norwich. Now, although the house was so big, there was allotted to it
only a small square of garden; a garden exquisitely kept and fostered;
a garden to smell the roses in, blushing on their neat rows of
standards; to walk in, holding father's or mother's hand; even,
wondrous treat! to take our tea in, sometimes, sitting demurely, we
two, with a couple of dolls and a few lead soldiers from Willy's last
new box for company, at the little round table whose root was buried
deep in the ground beneath the red may-tree. A garden for such mild
pleasures, but not for play. A garden that was the delight of our
city-bred father, who protected the sprouting mignonette seeds from
depredations of snail and slug, who trained with tenderest care the
slenderest shoots of sweet-pea and canariense, who tied and pruned and
watered with his own hands when office hours were over. A broken toy
would have been as great an offence in that treasured spot as a stray
cat; a little footmark on the verbena bed, a kicked-up stone on the
gravel walk, were punishable offences. No room for us two children
there.
And so, besides the nursery where our toys and books were kept and
where our soberer hours were passed, there was given up to our use at
the top of the house a large attic, which was called our play-room.
It is quite desirable for children to run wild at times, it is good for
them to shout, to scream, to jump, to ramp--good for girls as well as
boys. And if you girls who read this have not a big garden where you
may do these things unmolested, I counsel you to demand respectfully of
your parents a play-room such as was this of ours. I don't for a minute
advise you to copy Willy and me in aught--for we were often and often a
naughty pair--I only suggest that your parents should copy ours in
making over to you an empty room.
We had not many toys there. On looking back I think we spent our time
mostly in struggles on the floor, rolling over and over each other with
screams and shouts; with roarings as of wild animals emphasising the
fact that we were not Willy and his little sister Polly, but a great
large lion and a huge black bear in mortal combat. We played at French
and English too. It takes a lot of yelling from lusty lungs, a lot of
stamping and jumping on hollow boards, for one little girl to represent
at all adequately a mighty and victorious army. Of Willy, as not only
his countless followers but as Napoleon at their head, a good deal was
also required. With all our vigour, we were only ordinary flesh and
blood and we always grew tired at last, and then we sat down quietly
upon the floor and looked through our closed window at the window
opposite.
There was only a narrow passage between our house and the next; walking
through it with outstretched arms you could touch the house walls on
either side. Unless you leaned quite out of the window, so high up were
we, you could not see the little dark-paved court beneath; and a close
wire screen covering the window was believed to prevent the possibility
of our looking out at all. But Willy, to whose bold, adventurous spirit
I felt my own but a feeble companion, had contrived with his
pocket-knife to undo the four screws which attached the wooden
framework of the screen to the window-frame. So that the obstacle being
at will removed, and I holding desperately to his knickerbockered legs,
the boy could look out upon the black pavement beneath, or drop a
marble from his pocket upon the head of a passer-by.
It was not the dark passage, however, which as a rule claimed our
attention, but the window exactly opposite our own. We could see quite
plainly into the room, and its occupant could see into ours.
This was a small young man with a pale face. So much I remember of him;
and the fact that the sight of prominent dark eyes and a runaway chin
always recalls to me this episode in my childhood's career, inclines me
to believe that that conformation of features was his.
The room had been empty like our own till one day a bed had been set up
in it, and a chair and a washstand; and after that the young man had
appeared.
"It isn't his play-room, it's his bedroom; he's another lodger at
Miller's," Willy informed me.
When we were not at play we used to sit at the window and watch him. He
did not go to an office, like our father. He seemed to have nothing to
do. Sometimes he stood before the window and looked across at us, but
oftenest he lay on his back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
"I should jolly well like to have my bedroom up here, and never take
off my clothes when I go to bed," Willy said, enviously.
It is curious to remember what a new interest that silent watcher of us
gave to our gambols. It was with one eye on the pale young man at the
window that I marched to the tune of Old Bob Ridley on the field of
Waterloo; and Willy became so painfully realistic in giving me my
quietus, when I lay dying and at his mercy after the battle, that I had
to turn on my face and cry secretly, he hurt me so.
One day--a very sunshiny day, I remember, the sky above our neighbour's
roof was a bright blue--we were holding a lively representation of a
circus we had visited the day before. Willy, with the carriage whip
brought up from the hall, took the place of the gentleman in the ring,
while I as the piebald palfrey galloped on all fours spiritedly round
the place, or pranced proudly on my hind legs, to command. We were
spurred on to more vivacious action by the knowledge that our neighbour
had opened his window wide, and was standing before it. When we tired
of our equestrian performances, and took up our position opposite him,
he, for the first time, nodded and smiled at us, and presently motioned
to us to throw up our window likewise.
Proud and pleased at this mark of attention, we speedily tore down the
screen, and, both of us going to work together in our eagerness, flung
the window wide.
"Nothing like being friendly with your neighbours," the young man said.
"You seem pretty lively across there--how do you do?"