HUMPHREY Strange gave a sort of snort, made for the window, and threw it
open.
“Gru! This room is beastly, I’ll swear that window hasn’t been open for
a month, the whole place is fusty with mildew. The beggar is drunk or
the wire was delayed—I’ll have a fire anyway.”
By the way he went about making it, it was easy to see the man knew his
work. First he shoved his stick up the chimney to see if that was free,
then he looked round.
“Plenty of kindling!” he muttered, pouncing on a band-box in the corner
with a battered old hat in it. “Tolly’s, I’ll be bound, reeking with
grease,—a direct interposition of Providence, this!”
He crushed it up, crammed it into the grate, and arranged broken pieces
of band-box above it with mathematical precision, then he rummaged a
broken chair out of an inner room, smashed the rotten legs across his
knees, and added them to the heap, which at the first touch of the match
shot into flame.
“It will clean the brutal air,” he remarked, “and it is quite cold
enough for a fire. I wish I had stayed where I was till June. Tolly’s
bout might have been over by that time. Not so much as the smell of an
oil rag here,” he continued reflecting, “I must go out and forage.”
Putting another chunk of chair on the fire and forcing a side window
open with an ease that spoke well for his condition, he went out and
returned shortly with a big knobbly parcel in one hand, and a smooth
brown-paper one in the other.
From the first he produced a huge wedge of steak, some cut slices of
ham, and a loaf of bread, the brown held a bottle of beer.
When the fire had burnt down to a hot bed of cinders, Strange put the
tongs across it, the poker and a piece of thick wire he had poked out of
a cupboard across these, then balanced the steak on the top of this
gridiron, and watched it fizzling and sputtering with a gratified air of
expectancy.
“I left a gridiron, a saucepan, and a kettle in the bottom of that
cupboard,” he mused, keeping a keen eye on the grill, “all in decent
condition. Tolly again! I’ll put the fear of God in the fellow’s heart
before to-morrow’s out, ‘That must be to-morrow, not to-night.’ A sell
for me, my boy, if not for you, I feel just up to it now, by to-morrow
the desire may have lost its savour. I must find something to put this
steak on and to hold the beer. Not a sign of my pewter! Phew, one
cracked glass! Lord! there were dozens! and one hot-water plate with
half the delft off it, I could swear I left that shelf full of crockery!
and after this a Christian man is expected to do no murder!”
When he had got half through the slab of steak a strong thirst came on
Strange.
“There is a cork-screw in one of my inner pockets,” he reflected,
looking lazily round, “never mind, this is shorter!”
He stretched out his arm for the poker, and with it, knocked the top of
the bottle clean off and drank his beer with wholesome satisfaction.
When he had eaten and drunk enough, he pushed back his plate and glass,
and took a bundle of quills and some MS. paper out of a small cabinet.
“Seemingly Tolly has found no use for these,” he thought, as he
sharpened a quill.
He then produced a bundle of smudgy notes from an inner pocket and laid
them by the paper.
“I’ll have a thorough good smoke,” he said, stretching his legs “and
then I’ll be game for six hours’ work. I swear,” he continued, rubbing
his hideous, inch-long, bristly, reddish beard, “I’ll not touch an
individual bristle of this mat till Lynton has got his first consignment
of ‘copy’, then I shall clean up and resume civilization.”
Strange was a good many things but he was above all others a traveller,
he had neither nerves nor stomach, which is proof sufficient that he had
been preordained to the _rôle_, and he had discovered his election very
early in life.
At the opening of one of his Eton vacations, when to look at he was a
mere chit of a child with a pair of gray eyes that were staggering from
the sheer artlessness of them, he had dodged the parental eye at
Waterloo, and instead of going down into Plowshire, he had taken ship at
Rotherhithe, and had reached Amsterdam by the skin of his teeth, the tub
being untrustworthy and nearly foundering in mid-channel.
When he came back, more artless than ever to look at, he knew as much of
the life of the Hollanders of all classes and of every side of the life,
moreover, as if he had dwelt among them for a round five years.
On his return to school he proceeded to record his experiences in the
school organ, and on their appearance in that chaste journal, he was had
up before his house master.
“Where did you hear all this, Strange?” demanded the scandalized
gentleman.
“I saw it, sir, and it’s quite true,” was the artless reply.
“The deuce it is!” muttered Dr. Bromby. “That hardly betters matters. I
have ordered every copy of this paper to be burnt, Strange,” said the
doctor severely, “and in future, I wish to look through your manuscript
myself before it goes to the press. Unalloyed truth is sometimes out of
place. Stick to your classics, Strange, you will write well some day,
that is, if you become a little surer in your Latin, otherwise your
English will always be slovenly. If I were you I should reserve some of
my experiences, if you are in the habit of entertaining your fags with
them in off-times,” concluded the doctor.
“Yes, sir,” said Humphrey, and departed cheerily.
Strange had just now come back unexpectedly from a long tour in Algeria.
According to his own way of thinking he had had a glorious time if ever
man had. He had lived in the tents of the Arabs, in the camps of the
coast Zouaves, and in the hills and the deserts with the Bedouins, like
David.
He had known
“Of the plunge in a pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust divine,
And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine.”
He had braved heat, cold, hunger, thirst, filth and squalor, fleas and
worse than fleas, snakes and beasts of prey, but he had learned a new
variety of man and of the conditions that mould men’s lives.
He had lived the life himself and could think as such men think, feel as
they feel, speak and act as they do. He had gained a new power and felt
a new growth of manhood quickening in his veins, and now he was
recording what he knew.
Many travellers only _see_ he _knew_. He had touched the core of the
heart of things, and every word he wrote carried conviction to those who
read and marvelled at the wonderful knack the fellow had of telling
primitive truths cleanly.
Strange kept his word and worked without break for six hours on end,
then he tumbled off his seat with sudden sleep, having just sense enough
to first roll himself in his Ulster. When Tolly arrived next morning at
eleven o’clock, the delayed wire in his hand and his hair erect with
terror, he found his master snoring in a strong breeze, with the full
sun on him, and at least a pound of dried grease all over the fender.
Tolly groaned.