PART I.--NETTA, THE MAKE-BELIEVER

Produced by Malcolm Farmer and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

HERE AND HEREAFTER

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

LINDLEY KAYS

THE GIFTED FAMILY

THE EXILES OF FALOO

HERE AND

HEREAFTER

BY

BARRY PAIN

METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

_First Published in 1911_

CONTENTS

PAGE

MALA 1

THE FEAST AND THE RECKONING 39

POST-MORTEM 57

THE GIRL WITH THE BEAUTIFUL HAIR 65

THE WIDOWER 74

THE UNFINISHED GAME 83

SPARKLING BURGUNDY 104

THE ACT OF HEROISM 120

SOME NOTES ON CYRUS VERD 137

THE FOUR-FINGERED HAND 152

THE TOWER 162

THE FUTILITY OF WILLIAM PENARDEN 175

THE PATHOS OF THE COMMONPLACE 188

THE NIGHT OF GLORY 209

AN IDYLL OF THE SEA 222

THE MAGIC RINGS 230

THE UNSEEN POWER 243

A BRISK ENGAGEMENT 259

HASHEESH 276

THE GARDENER 288

THE SCENT 300

HERE AND HEREAFTER

MALA

I

It was Saturday night at the end of a hard week. I was just finishing my

dinner when I was told that a man wished to see me at once in the

surgery. The name, Tarn, was unknown to me.

I found a fair-haired man of thirty in a faded and frayed suit of

mustard-colour, holding in his hand a broken straw hat. His face was

rather fat and roundish; his build powerful but paunchy. The colour of

face and hands showed open-air life and work. His manner was slow,

apathetic, heavy. His speech was slow too, but it was the speech of an

educated man, and the voice was curiously gentle.

"My wife's ill, doctor. Can you come?"

"I can. What's the matter with her, Mr Tarn?"

He explained. I do not regard child-bearing as illness, and told him so.

I told him further that he ought to have made his arrangements and to

have engaged a doctor and nurse beforehand.

"In her own country they do not regard it as illness either. The women

there do not have doctor or nurse. She did not wish it. But, however,

as she seemed to suffer--"

"Well, well. We'll get on. Where do you live?"

"Felonsdene."

"Eight miles away and right up on the downs. Phew! Can I get my car

there?"

"Most of the way at any rate--we could always walk the rest."

"We'll chance it. I'll bring the car round. Shan't keep you a minute, Mr

Tarn."

I kept him rather longer than that. There were the lamps to see to, and

I had directions to give to my servants. I did not take my driver with

me. He had been at work since eight in the morning. When I re-entered

the surgery I found Tarn still standing in just the same pose and place,

as if he had not moved a hair's-breadth since I left him.

"Ready now," I said, as I picked up my bag.

He took out a pinch of sovereigns from his waistcoat-pocket, seven or

eight of them.

"Your fee, doctor," he said.

"That can wait until I've done my work. Come along. Shall I lend you an

overcoat?"

He thanked me but refused it, saying that he was used to all weathers.

The night was fairly warm too. He sat beside me on the front seat. The

first six miles were easy enough along a good road, and I talked to him

as I drove. I omit the professional part of our conversation--the

questions which a doctor would naturally put on such an occasion.

"So your wife's a foreigner," I said. "What nationality?"

"She is a woman of colour--a negress."

It is true that all coloured people inspire me with a feeling of

physical repulsion, and equally true that I can set all feelings of

repulsion aside when there is work to be done.

"Ah!" I said. "And you live up at Felonsdene. To tell the truth, I

didn't know anybody lived there. I remember the place--came on it two

years ago or more when I was roaming over the downs. There was a

farm-house all in ruins--and, let me see, was there a cottage? I didn't

come upon anybody living there then. I remember that, because I was

thirsty after my walk and couldn't get a drink."

"There was no one there then, and there is no cottage. We came last

year. Part of the farm-house has been repaired."

"Well, you've struck about the loneliest spot in England. Who's your

landlord?"

"Eh? It's mine--I bought it. Two acres and the farm-house. Had trouble

to get it--a deal of trouble."

"And who's with your wife now?" I asked.

"Nobody. She's alone in the house."

"Well, that's not right," I said.

"We have no servants--do everything ourselves. The nearest house is a

farmer's at Sandene, three miles away, and we've had no dealings with

him. It couldn't be helped, and--she's different, you know. I was not

long in coming to you. I caught the mail-cart as soon as I reached the

road, and got a lift."

"Still, I'm thinking--how am I to get on?"

"You'll find I can do anything a woman can do, and do it better. I am

more intelligent and I have no nerves. You must pull up at the next

gate, doctor. We strike across the downs there."

We had done the six miles, mostly up hill, in twenty-one minutes. Now we

turned through the gate, along a turf track deeply rutted. Luckily the

weather had been dry for the last fortnight. We crawled up to the top of

the crest and then along it for a mile. I saw lights ahead in a hollow

below. A dog barked savagely.

"That Felonsdene?" I asked.

"That's it. The descent is bad."

When I got to it I found that it was very bad. I stopped the engines.

"If we break our necks we shan't be much use," I said. "I'll leave the

car here. There's nobody to run away with it."

"Shall we take a lamp?" he asked.

"Better."

He picked up my bag, unhitched one lamp, and extinguished the other,

while I spread the rug over the seats. His ordinary slowness was

deceptive. When he was actually doing something he was remarkably quick

without being hurried. He was quick too in seeing a mechanical

device--that was clear from the way he handled the lamps. We began the

brief descent, and the dog barked more furiously than ever.

"Is that dog loose?" I asked, as we neared the house.

"Yes," he said. "But he's educated. He'd kill a stranger who came alone;

he won't touch you."

He gave a whistle and the barking stopped. The dog, an enormous black

retriever, came running towards us; his eyes in the lamplight had a

liquid trustfulness.

"Heel," said Tarn sharply, and the dog paced quietly behind him, taking

no notice of me whatever.

We went through a yard surrounded by a wall of rough stone. By the light

of the lamp I saw that the wall had been mended in places. There was a

rough shed on the left, with crates and packing-cases under it. The

front door was flush with the wall of the house. It was unlocked, and

when Tarn opened it a bright light streamed out. Within was a small

square hall, and I noticed that the light was incandescent gas.

Tarn saw that I had noticed it. "I put in a gas-plant," he said. "Will

you come this way?"

He took me into a great living-room. I should think it was about forty

feet by twenty. There was a big open fireplace at the further end of the

room. The floor was flagged, without rugs or carpets. The walls were the

same inside as out, rough stone and mortar; there were three small

windows high up in the walls. The windows were newly glazed, the walls

had been repaired. There was very little furniture--three wooden windsor

chairs, a couple of deal tables, and some cupboards made from

packing-cases. There was no attempt at ornament or decoration of any

kind, and there was no disorder. The scanty furniture was precisely

arranged, nothing was left lying about, and everything was scrupulously

clean. The timbers of the pointed roof seemed to me to be new. The room

was very brightly lit, with more gas jets (of the cheapest description)

than were needed.

What struck me most was the smell of the place--a smoky, greenish,

sub-acid, slightly aromatic smell. I wondered if it could come from the

great logs that smouldered in the fireplace, before which the retriever

now stretched himself.

"Queer smell here," I said. "What is it?"

"It comes," he said, "from the smoke of juniper leaves."

"You don't burn those in the fireplace, do you?"

"No. I--I don't think you'd understand."

The words were said gently, almost sadly, without offensive intention.

But they annoyed me a little--I did not like to be told by this

scarecrow that I could not understand.

"Very well," I said. "Now then, where's your wife?"

He pointed to a door at the further end of the room, on the right of the

fireplace. "Through there," he said. "I--I don't know if you speak

French."

"I do."

"Mala speaks French more easily than English. She lived for many years

in Paris--was born there. You'll find in that room the things a chemist

in Helmstone thought might be wanted. If you need anything else, or want

my help in any way, I shall be here."

"Good," I said, and passed through the door he had indicated.

I must remember that I am not writing for doctors. All I need say of the

case is that it was a good thing Tarn fetched me. It was a case where

the intervention of a medical man was imperatively necessary. Otherwise

all went perfectly well. The child was born in a little more than an

hour after my arrival, a girl, healthy and vigorous, and as black as the

ace of spades. Tarn did all that was required of him perfectly--quickly,

but without noise or hurry, and with great intelligence.

Mala, his wife, seemed to me to be very young. She was a girl of

splendid physique; her face, like the face of every negress, repelled

me. She showed affection for her child, and expressed her intention of

nursing it herself, of which she seemed capable. This was all

natural--more natural than normal unfortunately--but all the time I was

conscious that I was attending a woman of morbid psychology. When I left

her asleep, it was to join a man of morbid psychology in the great

living-room.

"All well?" asked Tarn, as I entered.

"Quite. Both asleep." My body was tired, and I dare say I ought to have

been sleepy myself, but my mind was awake and alert. The unusual nature

of the experience may account for it. I sat down and gave him some

instructions and advice about his wife, to which he paid close

attention.

"Must you come here again?" he asked. I thought it a question that might

have been better expressed.

"Yes," I said. "I don't want to pile up the visits, but I must do what's

wanted."

"I didn't mean that. I meant that unless you were coming again in any

case, I should have to make arrangements for fetching you if the need

arose."

I laughed. "Arrangements? Well, you've nobody to send but yourself?"

"There's the dog."

"But he doesn't know where I live."

"I was meaning to teach him that to-morrow. I'd better do it in any

case--one never knows what may happen." He sighed profoundly.

"Teach him to fetch the doctor--eh? He must be a clever beggar. What do

you call him?"

"He has no name. He's not a pet. You must take some refreshment before

you go. Whisky?"

"Ah, a drop of whisky and a biscuit would be rather welcome. Thanks."

He brought out a jar of whisky, a gasogen of soda-water, and some large

hard biscuits in their native tin.

"To your daughter's health," I said, as I raised my glass.

He suddenly put his glass down. "Farce," he said savagely. "But it's all

farce--this--this fuss, She's born to die, isn't she? It's the common

lot. She's hauled out of nothing by blind Chance, to be tossed back into

nothing by blind Chance. Drink the health of the seaweed that the tide

throws up on the shore and the tide sucks back again? No! Not I!"

The whole thing had been so strange that this outbreak did not

particularly astonish me. "You'd be a happier man, Mr Tarn, and a more

sensible man, if you would simply accept Nature as you find it. You

can't alter it and you can't understand it. You're beating your head

against a wall."

This ragged fellow took on an air of superiority that annoyed me. "Yes,

yes," he said. "I've heard all that--and so often. It's the point of

view of ordinary materialistic science. You are not a religious man."

"Certainly," I said, "I don't pretend that I know what I do not know.

Nor am I fool enough, Mr Tarn, to complain of what from insufficient

data I am unable to understand. Put in other words, I am neither an

orthodox believer nor an atheist. Do I understand that you are a

religious man yourself?"

"The religion of Mala and her people is mine."

"Really? You turn the tables on the missionaries. Well, the theological

discussion is interesting but it is often interminable; and I have work

to do to-morrow. I must be getting on."

"I will come with you as far as the car. But first, doctor, the dog must

learn that you are welcome here and that he is never to harm you. Call

him and give him a bit of biscuit."

I called him. He looked up from his place before the fire but did not

move. Then Tarn made a movement with his hand, and the dog got up, shook

himself, and walked slowly towards me. He went all round me, sniffing. I

held out the biscuit to him, and he looked away to his master and

whined. Tarn nodded, and the dog immediately took the food from my hand.

"Yes," said Tarn, as if answering what I was thinking, "he has never

been allowed to take food from any hand but mine. He will never forget

you. You can come here at any hour of the day or night now with perfect

safety. It's--it's the freedom of the city."

As Tarn climbed with me up to the car, he spoke again on the subject of

my fee. "I suppose I should not have offered it in advance," he said.

"But it occurred to me that, as I never think about clothes, I looked

very poor, and that the place where I have chosen to live also looked

very poor. And you did not know me. As a matter of fact, I am bothered

with far more money than I want."

"Ah!" I laughed. "I could do with a little worry of that sort."

As he fixed up the lamps he thanked me warmly for what I had done for

Mala, and asked what time he might expect me on the morrow. I opened my

pocket-book and looked at it by the light of the lamp. "Well, I've a

light day to-morrow, barring accidents. I shall be here some time in the

afternoon."

The drive home was accomplished without incident. I ran the car into the

coach-house and went straight to bed. But for more than an hour I could

not get to sleep. I was haunted by that man and his negress wife,

building theories about them, trying to account for them. Just as I was

dropping off I was awakened again by a smell of bitter smoke in my

nostrils--the smell of burning juniper leaves. Then I recognised that

the smell was a memory-illusion, and fell asleep in real earnest.

II

I got back from my Sunday morning round before one. Helmstone was rather

full of visitors that day, and there were many cars before the big hotel

in the Queen's Road. As my man was driving slowly through the traffic I

saw, a hundred yards away, Tarn striding along, in the same shabby

clothes, with his retriever at his heel. He turned down a side-street,

and I saw no more of him. On inquiry I found that he had not called at

my house. He had merely been there, as he said, to give the dog his

lesson.

I am a bachelor. I lunched alone on cold beef and beer, and I read the

_Lancet_. I intended to remain materialistic and scientific, and not to

be infected by that air of mystery and morbidity which seemed to hang

round Tarn and his negress wife at Felonsdene. I had not been in

practice for ten years without coming on strange occurrences before, and

they had all lost their strangeness when the facts had been filled in.

My after-luncheon visit to Felonsdene was of course professional, but if

I had any chance I meant to satisfy an ordinary lay curiosity as well.

I drove myself, and the track across the downs looked worse in daylight

than it had done by night. Still it seemed reasonable to suppose that

what the car had done then it could do now. I could see more clearly now

what had been done in the way of repairs to that ruined and

long-deserted farm-house. The pointed roof over the big room where I had

sat the night before had been mended and made weather-tight. The

chimney-stack was new, and so were the window-casements. Adjoining the

big room was a building of irregular shape that might possibly have

contained three or four other rooms, roofed with new corrugated iron.

One or two outbuildings looked as if they had been newly constructed

from old materials. But that part of the farm-house which had originally

been two-storied had been left quite untouched. Half the roof of it was

down, the windows were without glass, and one saw through them the

broken stairs and torn wall-paper peeling off and flapping in the brisk

March breeze. On the grass-field beyond the court-yard two good Alderney

cows were grazing. Most of the land looked neglected; but Tarn had no

help and had everything to do himself. An orchard of stunted and

miserable-looking fruit trees was sheltered by a dip of the land from

north and east.

The dog barked furiously when he heard my car, and before I began the

climb down to the farm-house I picked up two or three flints with intent

to use them if he went for me. But all signs of hostility vanished when

he saw me. He did not leap and gambol for joy, but he thrust his nose

into my hand and then walked just in front of me, wagging his tail, and

looking back from time to time to see that I understood and was

following him.

He led the way across the court-yard, through the open outer door, and

across the hall to the door of the big room. He scratched at the door.

From impatience I knocked and entered.

Tarn had fallen asleep before the fire in one of the windsor chairs. He

was just rousing himself as I entered. He had taken off his coat and his

heavy boots and wore felt slippers that had a home-made look. From the

table beside him it appeared that he had lunched frugally on whisky,

milk and hard biscuits.

"Sorry I was asleep," he said. "But the dog knew."

"Ah!" I said. "You'd a long walk this morning. I saw you at Helmstone."

"Yes. I told you."

"You should have come into my house for a rest. How's your wife getting

on--had a good night?"

"It seems so. She has slept a long time. So has the child. I will find

out if she will see you." He passed into the inner room.

If she had expressed any disinclination to see me I should have been

extremely angry; also, I might have thought it right to disregard the

disinclination. But Tarn reappeared almost directly and asked me to go

in

I found that all was going as well as possible both with her and with

the child. She really was a splendid animal, unhurt either by excessive

work or--as many modern mothers are--by a rotten fashionable life. With

me she was reticent, almost sullen in manner; yet she seemed docile and

had carried out my orders. The only difficulty was, as I had expected,

to get her to remain in bed. With her child she showed white teeth in

ecstasies of maternal joy. Before I had finished with her I heard the

rain pattering on the iron roof of her room.

I went back into the great living-room. It was rather dark there, for

the sky was heavily clouded and the windows, placed high up, gave but

little light. The table had been cleared, and Tarn was not there. I sat

down to wait for him, and the dog got up from the fire and came over to

me and laid his head on my knee. He was an enormous and very powerful

brute, as much retriever as anything, but evidently with another strain

in his composition. I felt quite safe with him now, talked to him and

patted him--attentions which he received gravely, without resistance but

without any signs of pleasure.

Presently Tarn came in from outside. His hair was wet with the rain.

"I've taken up a tarpaulin," he said, "and thrown it over your car,

doctor."

"That's very good of you," I said. "I was just doubting if that rug of

mine would be enough."

"It comes down heavily. You must remain here awhile, unless you have

other patients whom you must see at once."

"No," I said. "This finishes my work for to-day, I hope. I always try to

arrange for Sunday afternoon free, and I'm glad to accept your

hospitality. No juniper smoke to-day."

"There has been--no occasion." He went on quickly to inquire about his

wife and child. He was not a man who showed his emotions much, but he

certainly left me with the impression that he was fond and proud of the

child. He asked several questions about her as he went round the room,

lighting the gas-jets. Then we sat before the log fire and lit our

pipes.

"One's a little surprised to find gas in a place like this," I said.

"It makes less work than lamps. When one tries to be independent and do

the work oneself that's a consideration. Besides, it gives more light,

and people who live alone as we do need plenty of light. I'm afraid it

must all seem rather puzzling."

"Well," I said, "I don't want to be curious."

"And I don't want to puzzle anybody, nor to enlighten anybody either.

Still, you've done much for us--Mala says she would have died but for

you. If you care for a very simple story you can have it."

"Just as you like," I said. "But I should imagine that your story would

be interesting."

"I do not think so. A little more than a year ago I was in Paris. Mala

was also there. I met her through a friend of mine. I brought her to

England and married her. You know how such a marriage is regarded

here--how a woman of colour is regarded in any case. Very well,

Felonsdene was a place where we could live to ourselves."

He stopped, as if there had been no more to say.

"So far," I said, "you have told me precisely what one might have

conjectured. How did it all happen? What were you doing in Paris--and

Mala? Who was the friend? How did it come about?"

He spoke slowly, more to himself, as it seemed, than to me. "My friend

was an English Catholic, an ex-priest, a religious man like myself. His

mind gave way, and he is shut up in an asylum now. He took me to see

Mala. Night after night. Sometimes it was miraculous--and sometimes

nothing. When the performance went badly, the uncle beat her. We could

stop that because it was only a question of money. I remember it

all--settled after midnight at a _cafe_ where we drank absinthe--the

uncle with arms too long and very prognathous, like a dressed-up ape,

pouncing on the bank-notes with hairy fingers and counting aloud in

French, very bad French, not like Mala's. He was very old--a hundred

years, he said--he cannot have been her uncle really. A great-uncle

perhaps. He was not a religious man at all. He kept patting the pocket

where the bank-notes were. We put him in a fiacre, because he was drunk.

We were out of Paris that night--my friend, and Mala, and myself. Next

morning we crossed the Channel, and next night there was a riot at the

theatre because Mala did not appear. Did I say where we went in England?

I am not used to speaking so much, and it confuses me."

I was afraid he would stop again. "I don't think you mentioned the exact

name," I said.

"Wilsing, my friend's own place. High walls, and lonely gardens, but too

many servants--they all looked questions at us. Gardeners would touch

their caps and look round after we had passed--you can imagine it. It

was while we were at Wilsing that I married Mala. And shortly afterwards

my poor friend had to be taken away. You see, doctor, he was a very

earnest man, and very religious. He had gone too far along a new road,

and he was horribly frightened but could not go back. It was too much

for him. Mala and I had to go away also, of course. I remember hotels

that would not take us in. We have been followed in the streets by

jeering crowds. Even when I had found Felonsdene there was endless

trouble before I could buy it. No tenant could be found for it--there

is some silly story that the place is haunted. Besides, the house was

all in ruins, and too far from--from everything. And yet the owner would

not sell."

He paused. "And in the end?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, I got it in the end. I tempted him. Here we have arranged life

as we wish it to be, and we practise our religion without molestation.

There are consolations."

"The consolations of religion," I suggested.

Suddenly he put down his pipe and stood up erect. He stretched an arm

out clumsily towards me. His eyes flashed under the bright gas-jets, and

his nostrils quivered. He spoke in a low voice but with the most intense

emphasis. "You don't know what you're saying. In our religion there are

no consolations. There is only propitiation, and again propitiation, and

always propitiation--the sacrifice of more and more as the end draws

nearer." He swept his arm round and pointed at the door of his wife's

room. "What consolation is there from the Power that there--in there,

where you have been--linked love with life only to link life with death

again? What consolation from the Power that has closed and sealed the

door of knowledge?"

He sat down and remained silent. I was beginning to form some

conclusions.

"Then what consolations have you?"

"Linked to bitterness and yet something. For example--I have Mala."

"Your child also."

"Yes, the child too. For a little time perhaps."

There was again a pause. The rain had cleared now and I rose to go. "Mr

Tarn," I said, "before I leave you I think it my duty as a doctor to

tell you something."

"About Mala?" he asked eagerly.

"About yourself." He laughed contemptuously. "If you go on with your

present manner of life I will not answer for the consequences. I think

you are playing, and have been playing, a very dangerous game; the case

of your own friend warns you how dangerous it is. This prolonged

solitude is bad for you and bad for your wife. This pessimistic brooding

over things you cannot understand--which you are pleased to call a

religion--is worse still, especially if it is accompanied by any rites

or ceremonies which might impress a morbid imagination. I'm not going to

mince matters--if you don't give this up you'll lose your reason."

"What is it you want me to do?"

"Do not be so absurdly sensitive about the fact that you have married a

negress. Be a man and not a baby. Go and live in some village and mix

with your fellow-men. No novelty lasts more than three months. Before

the end of that time your wife will excite no attention at all--the

position will be accepted. And if you can't find any better religion

than the dismal rubbish that is poisoning your mind at present, then

have none at all. It will be better for you."

"It is impossible to take your advice," he said stolidly.

"Why?"

"Because Mala and I are as we were made. We won't argue it."

"Please yourself. I've done my duty. Good-bye, Mr Tarn."

He told me that he was coming with me to the road. The very thin skin of

turf on the hard rock of the crest of the hill would be so greasy that

the wheels of my car would go round ineffectively and refuse to bite

without his weight on the back axle. At the rutty descent on the other

side he would get off and walk by the car to lend a hand if the wheels

sank too deep in the mud there. His predictions happened exactly, and I

was very glad of his help. At the road he left me; up on the hill his

dog guarded the tarpaulin and waited for his return.

Certainly, in some simple practical matters the man was still showing

himself sane and shrewd enough.

I dined that night with a bachelor friend in Helmstone who has a good

reference library and a vast fund of curious information. He told me to

what Power the smell of burning juniper was supposed to be agreeable. He

also informed me that Wilsing was the Herefordshire seat of the Earl of

Deljeon.

"Poor beggar!" added my host.

"Deljeon?" I asked. "Why?"

"Oh, well--he's in an asylum, you know. And likely to stop there, so

they say."

III

I happened in the course of the next week to hear of Tarn from another

source.

Tarn had told me that his next neighbour was the farmer at Sandene,

three miles away, and that they had had no dealings together. Now I knew

little Perrot, the farmer at Sandene, very well. I had attended his

robust and prolific wife on three natural occasions, I had seen the

children through measles, I had done what I could for the chronic

dyspepsia of his termagant aunt, I had looked after Perrot's knee when a

horse kicked him. Perrot was a ferret-faced man, a hard man at a bargain

and a very good man on a horse. Between farming and horse-coping he did

very fairly well. He was the willing and abject slave of his wife and

his numerous children. He was interested in medical matters, of which

he had no knowledge whatever, and relished an occasional long word. So

I was not surprised to receive a note from Perrot stating "our Gladys

seems to have omphitis," that he would be glad if I could call, and that

he was my obedient servant. Tommy, the brother of Gladys, took back my

verbal answer that I would call that morning.

Sandene resembles Felonsdene in that both are hollows in the downs, and

resembles it in no other respect. Sandene is approached by a definite

and well-made road. Its farm-house and little group of cottages have a

cheerful and human look. The inhabitants are busy folk, but they find

time to whistle and to laugh. Gladys Perrot, I found, was suffering from

a diet of which the nature and extent had been dictated by enthusiasm

rather than by judgment. I was able to say definitely that she would

soon recover.

Perrot came in from trouble with a chaff-cutter to have a few words with

me.

"So it's not omphitis?" he said with an air of relief.

"I should say it was a slight bilious attack. But I don't know what

omphitis is."

"All I can say is that my poor grandmother died of it. Buried thirty-six

hours afterwards--had to be. Makes one careful. That's why I sent Tom

down. He had cake at your place, he said. If he asked for it, I shall

have to pay him, to learn him manners."

I acquitted Tom. "No," I said, "that was my old housekeeper--trying to

make a job for me."

Perrot saluted the veteran joke heartily.

"I was up with your neighbours at Felonsdene the other day," I said.

"Ah!" said Perrot, grimly. "Man ill?"

"No. His wife's just got a baby."

"And you attended her. Very good of you. Vet's work I should have called

that."

"You don't know them, do you?"

"Nor want. Not but what he and his dog did me a good turn once. If you

like to take the message, sir, you can tell Tarn that Mr Perrot of

Sandene would be glad to give him five sovereigns for that dog. So I

would too, and not think twice about it."

"I'll tell him," I said. "What was the good turn?"

"I lost a couple of sheep. And that annoyed me, though they were marked

and pretty sure to be brought back some time. Still I was annoyed that

night, you ask the missus if I wasn't."

"Like a bear with a sore head," said Mrs Perrot cheerfully.

"Well, at half-past nine I was just on going up to bed, when there came

a great barking outside and a scratching at the door. It wasn't one of

my dogs, I knew, though you may be sure they very soon chipped in. I

went out, and there were my two sheep and Tarn's big dog with them.

Those sheep hadn't been hurried and scurried neither. They'd been

brought in nicely. The dog wouldn't let me get near him. He was what

might be called truculent, as some of the best of them are. He was away

again before you could say knife."

"He's no sheep-dog," said Mrs Perrot. "Five pounds for the likes of him!

What would you say if I talked like that?"

"To my mind," said Perrot, stolidly, "a sheep-dog is a dog that's clever

and reliable at handling sheep, and I don't care what the breed is--I

don't care if he's a poodle. Come to that, Tarn's dog looks like a cross

between a retriever and a--a elephant. All the same, he'd be worth five

sovereigns to me, and I'd back my judgment too. Tell you why. I expected

there was somebody with the dog and I wanted to do the right thing--a

drink for a master or sixpence for his man--and I gave a hulloa. There

was nobody within call, for I went right out and looked. He'd been sent

in by himself, and he'd made no mistake. That's no ordinary dog."

"No," I said, "he's not. I know him. He's rather a friend of mine."

"There--and the missus says he's more like some wild beast. Oh, they're

all right when they've got to know you, dogs are."

Perrot followed me out to the car. "There's rather a queer thing," he

said, "but I know the medical etiquette--doctors aren't supposed to

talk."

"Well," I said, "they're often supposed to talk, but they don't do it."

"Then you can't tell me anything about that--I don't know what to call

it--tabernacle, perhaps--at Felonsdene."

"I've seen nothing of the kind, nor heard of it either. What do you

mean?"

Perrot could only tell me what Ball had told him. Ball was a labourer

whom Perrot employed. Late in the previous October, on a Saturday

morning, Ball had gone in to Helmstone to deliver a horse that Perrot

had sold, and drew his wages before he went. He rode the horse in and

was to walk back. The purchaser of the horse gave Ball a pint. A friend

whom he met by chance gave Ball a quart. A few minutes later Ball gave

himself another quart, because he could afford it, and started for home.

A carter who gave him a lift told him that he was drunk, and though Ball

did not accept the theory completely he thought there might be something

to be said for it. It seemed better to him to roam the downs for a

couple of hours before he faced the inquisitorial glance of Mrs Ball.

When he reached Felonsdene he sat down to rest under some gorse near the

crest of the downs before tackling the three miles home to Sandene. He

fell asleep, and when he woke, shivering with cold, it was midnight. But

he maintained that it was not the cold which woke him; it was music of a

sort. There was a drum beating, not loud, but regularly. At intervals a

woman's voice was heard singing. "Stopping short and then starting in

again on it" was Ball's phrase to describe it. The sounds came from what

looked like an outhouse; it had no windows, but light streamed out from

the open door. And in the path of the light there was a grey smoke. He

crept very quietly and cautiously down to a point from which he might

see what was going on in there. The inside of the building was filled

with the grey smoke, but through it he could see many lighted candles,

candles as long as your arm, and a kneeling figure--he could not say

whether it was man or woman--in a long red garment. The singing and

drum-beating had stopped and all was quite still. Then Ball's foot

slipped and sent stones rattling down. The next minute Ball was running

for his life with, so he maintained, Tarn's dog after him.

As Ball got away, it may be believed that either the dog was chained, or

that it was called off immediately by Tarn himself.

"I don't know what you make of it, sir, but it looks to me as if those

Tarns were Romans," said Perrot.

"Mr Perrot," I said, "it doesn't do to take much notice of what a

fuddled man thinks he sees."

"Perhaps not," said Perrot. "Anyway, it gave Ball a good scare--he's

been teetotal ever since and talks of joining the Plymouth Brethren."

Within a brief period from that day my visits to Felonsdene ceased;

there was no longer any reason for them. Tarn accepted all that the law

required; he registered the birth of the child and he had her

vaccinated. The devotion of Mala and himself to that child was beyond

all question.

I repeated the very good advice which I had already given him, but he

refused to follow it. I think he considered that he had already said too

much, and he quite obviously attempted to minimise it. He said that

perhaps he had expressed himself too strongly. It was quite possible for

a small family to live happily and cheerfully together even in so

desolate a spot as Felonsdene. There was plenty to do. Mala had her baby

and the house to look after. He had the outdoor work. If he wanted to

see what the rest of the world was doing, he could always go into

Helmstone; there were plenty of hotels there where he could get a drink

and a game of billiards. When I told him what Ball professed to have

seen and heard he got rather angry. It was all a lie. Ball had never

been near the place. But a few minutes afterwards he said: "I wish I'd

let the dog get him."

It was all intended to be very reassuring. But it was not candid and it

was vaguely disquieting. It occurred to me to pay a visit one night

secretly to Felonsdene to see if I could make out what was going on. But

my practice in Helmstone was too heavy to leave leisure for nocturnal

expeditions of that sort; besides, it was no business of mine.

Tarn paid my bill--he wanted to pay twice as much--and I regarded the

incident as closed. If I were called in again I thought it likely that

it would be to certify the lunacy of either Tarn or his wife.

But the incident was reopened a little less than a year later, and not

in the way that I had expected.

IV

In the following January I took a partner in my practice. This was a

step which I had long contemplated. I was a bachelor, making far too

much money for my simple needs and working far too hard in order to

accomplish it. I also wanted time for my investigations into the cause

and treatment of a certain disease; these investigations have nothing to

do with the story of Mala and her husband and would not interest laymen.

I have no excuse but vanity for adding that they subsequently brought

me some reputation. My partner was a sound and able young man, much

interested in his profession, and soon made himself liked and respected.

My life became much easier and more comfortable.

In the March following, about four one morning, I was awakened by the

barking of a dog in the street outside my house. Presently I heard him

scratching at my door. I hurried down, switched on the lights, and

opened the door. I had thought of damage to my paint and not of Tarn, of

whom I had heard nothing for a long time. But it was Tarn's dog that lay

on the pavement outside.

I supposed at first that somebody at Felonsdene was ill, and that the

dog had been sent to fetch me. But the dog's appearance did not bear

this out. He had evidently come much further than the distance from

Felonsdene to my house. He got up when he saw me, but the poor brute was

so exhausted that he could hardly stand, and he looked as if he had been

starved for days. I called him into the house and got food for him; he

ate ravenously. I waited to see if he would try to get out again, but he

seemed perfectly content to remain where he was. Finally, he followed me

upstairs to my own room, where he stretched himself on the hearth-rug

and almost instantly fell asleep. I was just about to switch off the

light and get back into my bed again when I noticed the shining brass

plate on the dog's collar. I bent down and examined it. On the brass

plate, neatly engraved, were my own name and address. It looked as if

the dog were to be mine in future. But why? What had happened?

The dog established definitely his relations with the rest of my

household next morning. He took no notice whatever of anybody who left

him alone. But he would allow nobody but myself to touch him. Even my

partner, who understood dogs and was fond of them, had to confess

himself beaten. He was taking the round that morning, and I intended to

walk up to Felonsdene with the dog. But the poor brute was still so

stiff and footsore that I decided after all to take the car. He sat

beside me, and I rather think that he knew where he was going. But he

showed no excitement when the car stopped, and made no attempt to rush

off to the farm-house. He followed me quietly down the hill.

A saddled horse was tethered in the court-yard, and the outer door was

open. In the hall stood Mr Perrot with a penny note-book and a stumpy

pencil in his hand. He looked up as he heard my step, and greeted me

with his usual heartiness.

"This is a surprise, Mr Perrot," I said. "I didn't expect to find you

here. I was looking for Tarn."

"Afraid you won't find him, sir. They all cleared out yesterday morning.

I've bought this place."

"Bought it?"

"House and land, furniture and stock, everything except the dog and

their clothes. It's a little speculation of mine, and looks like being a

very good speculation too. I knew you were going to have the dog--he

told me he meant him as a present to you, and according to Tarn I could

never have done anything with him. Truculent--too truculent."

"I didn't know he was leaving. How did it come about?"

"Oh, he came round one morning three weeks ago, and asked me if I'd buy

his place. I said I'd buy that or anything else if the price were right.

And it was right enough because it was my own price; I came and went

over everything and said what I'd give, and he never haggled. I paid my

ten per cent. next day, and completed at the lawyer's in Helmstone

afternoon before last."

"Tarn was there?"

"He was. What's more, we had a bottle of champagne wine at the Armada

afterwards at his expense, and he drove me back to Sandene in his car."

"Car? I never knew he'd got one."

"Only had it two months, he said. It's a bigger one than yours, sir, and

I expect he'll lose money on it. For he told me he shouldn't take it

over to France with him, and they're bad things to sell. Yes, I felt

like one of the gentlefolk that afternoon--drinking champagne wine and

sitting in a motor-car. He must be a warmer man than ever I supposed."

"How was he looking?"

"Well, he was quiet, and yet he was a bit excited, if you know what I

mean. He'd new clothes on--oh, quite the thing. It's my belief that he's

come into money unexpected, and that he and the two niggers--the wife

and baby--are off on a jaunt together."

I did not share Perrot's belief, but I said nothing.

"In France they're not too particular, so I'm told," said Perrot. "I

daresay niggers go down better there than they do here."

"Did you see the woman and her baby when you were here?"

"No, they weren't shown, and I didn't ask for them. I don't think they

were in the house when I came, for I went into each room. But they must

have come in by another way before I left, for I heard them in the next

room to us. What's more, the baby was laughing and the woman was

sobbing."

"What was she crying about?"

Perrot laughed. "Why, women will cry for anything. Toothache perhaps.

Maybe he'd been giving her a bit of a dressing-down."

I did not agree with Perrot's conclusions, but again I made no comment.

Perrot had to get on his horse and ride back to Sandene. He confided to

me that he'd got a tenant for Felonsdene already. Mrs Lane was going to

live there with her married daughter and her son-in-law. Mrs Lane was

Perrot's bad-tempered and dyspeptic aunt, and so far she had lived in

Perrot's house at Sandene. "But I haven't got room for her any longer,"

said Perrot. "So she's taking her _exeatus_." I recommend _exeatus_ to

the philologist.

Perrot had ridden off, and I was half-way up the hill to my car, when

the idea struck me that I should like to have a look at the building

which had been used for the curious rites that Ball had described and I

turned back again. I found the place; it stood apart from the house, and

was boarded on the inside. That curious smell of bitter smoke still hung

about it. At one end I could see that some sort of fitment had been

removed, and there were splashes of candle-wax on the floor.

Coming out into the sunlight again, I noted that Tarn had done a little

levelling and road-making to enable him to get his car into Felonsdene

from the lower side of the hollow. This would give him a greater

distance to go if he were driving to Helmstone, but by the shorter route

which I had taken the approach was quite impracticable for a car.

And then, quite by chance, I noticed among the stunted trees of the

orchard something white that at a little distance looked not unlike a

big milestone. As I entered the orchard the dog whined and lay down. I

supposed that he was tired and left him there. A nearer view showed me a

column about three feet square and about four feet in height, neatly

built up of rough lumps of chalk. On the top of the column were a pile

of ashes and charred wood. It was then that its resemblance to a

sacrificial altar, such as I had seen pictured in an old illustrated

Bible, first struck me. Among the ashes something gleamed and sparkled.

I fished it out with a bit of stick. It was a small circlet of soft

gold, evidently not European work, and might have served as a child's

bangle. And my disturbance of the ashes had shown me other things.

I found an old wine-case in one of the sheds, and in this I placed all

that I had found on the top of the altar. The lower part of the ashes

and the top of the altar were still quite warm from the fire. I carried

the case up to my car, sweating with the effort and my hurry. I put the

case in the tonneau and covered it with a rug, and then, with the dog by

my side, I went home as fast as I could drive.

My partner had returned from his round and joined me in my examination

of what was in the case. Incineration had been imperfect and we had no

doubt whatever. I could state confidently that on an altar in an orchard

at Felonsdene the body of a young child had been burned, within

thirty-six hours of the time of my discovery, which was precisely twenty

minutes past twelve on the morning of 29th March. I returned at once to

my car and drove to the police-station, where I gave my information.

The number and the appearance of Tarn's car were well known. A white man

travelling with a negress cannot go anywhere in England without being

noticed. He and the woman had been in Paris before, and the man had

admitted to Perrot, under circumstances which might have overcome his

usual reticence, that he was going to France. The inspector who saw me

felt sure that Tarn would be found, and the whole mystery cleared up, in

a very short time.

Tarn and Mala were never found. They had been seen in the car in the

very early morning of the 28th. The car itself was found at Melcombe

Cliffs, an unimportant place on the coast about five miles from

Helmstone. Inquiries at ports gave negative results; no negress

accompanied by a white man had gone by any of the boats; the only

negress who had gone abroad bore no resemblance to Mala and was

satisfactorily accounted for.

The coroner was extremely polite to me at the inquest on the remains of

the child. He said that I had given my evidence in a most clear and open

manner. I had mentioned circumstances which I thought to be suspicious,

and of course it was my duty to mention them. But still I had admitted

fully--and he thought it a most important point--that both Tarn and his

wife were devoted to the child. It made any theory that they had been

guilty of the horrible crime of murdering the child seem very

improbable. Tarn had married a negress and was very sensitive on the

point; he lived alone; he hated any publicity. It seemed to him more

likely that the child died suddenly, perhaps as the result of an

accident, when Tarn and his wife were on the point of departure; and

that sooner than face the publicity and inquiry, they had taken this

quite illegal way of disposing of the body. Tarn was an educated man and

he would know that what he had done was illegal. He would be anxious to

avoid detection, and would probably change his plans in consequence. He

was also a wealthy man; the abandonment of the motor-car would not mean

very much to him. Inquiries had been made on the supposition that Tarn

and his wife had gone to France; but they might have gone elsewhere.

They might have shipped from Liverpool. A negress with the help of a

thick motor-veil, a wig, and grease-paints might easily conceal her race

for a little while. The absence of any evidence from people at Melcombe

Cliffs and the neighbourhood seemed rather to point to this. Tarn was a

gloomy man of rather morbid and religious temperament. He had certainly

said some extraordinary things, but the bark of a man of that type was

generally worse than his bite. The cremation of the child's body was

wrong and illegal, but the jury had nothing to do with that. There was

really no evidence pointing to murder; on the contrary, they had heard

that both parents were devoted to their child. An inconclusive verdict

was given.

It was on 27th March that the child was born; a year later precisely its

body was burned. It may have been a coincidence; it may not. I, at any

rate, have never been able to accept the coroner's comforting theory. I

remember that negress too well, and the power that she and her horrible

faith had over her husband. They loved their child, I believe. But in

the propitiation of the Power of evil, the dearer the victim the more

potent will be the sacrifice. They must have been insane in the end. And

possibly the sea at Melcombe Cliffs still holds the secret of what

became of them.

THE FEAST AND THE RECKONING

Mr Duncan Garth stood at his windows in park Lane and looked out. He was

a man of forty-five, unusually tall and broad, with a strong,

clean-shaven face.

"I should rather like," he said, "to buy Hyde Park."

His secretary, seated at a table behind him, chuckled.

"You are quite right, Ferguson," said Garth. "I can't buy Hyde Park or

the National Gallery. But I presume I've got the money value of both.

Wouldn't you say so, Ferguson?"

Ferguson was a slender young man. He looked far too young for the

important post of secretary to Mr Garth, and much younger than he really

was. His scrupulous care as to his personal appearance rather amused

Garth, who was careless in such matters almost to the point of

untidiness.

Ferguson lit a cigarette and reflected. "I should say not," he said.

"Hyde Park alone, of course, you could buy, if it were for sale. I don't

know what the National Gallery would figure out at, but silly people

give absurd sums for paint and canvas nowadays, and there's any amount

of it there. You might be able to do them both, but I should doubt it."

"Well, I'm going to give a luncheon-party, anyhow."

"Yes," said Ferguson, drily, "you can afford to do that. Whom am I to

ask?"

Garth consulted some memoranda on the back of an envelope. "I'm going to

mix 'em up a bit," he said. "You remember that girl in the post-office

yesterday?"

"The one who asked if you'd got any eyes in your head?"

"Yes. One should not, of course, hand in telegrams to the money-order

department. There was something in the bitter fury of the woman that

interested me. Naturally, I don't know her name and address, but I

suppose you can get that."

"Of course," said Ferguson, making a shorthand note.

"Then I must have old Lady Longshore. I should like an actor-manager,

too. Could you suggest?"

"Want him for his egotism?"

"Quite so," said Mr Garth. "Of course."

"Then you can't do better than Eustace Richards. A fluent talker. But

you've met him."

"So I have," said Garth, "now I come to think of it. He will do

admirably. Then I should like Archdeacon Pringle and his wife, and that

chap I went to about my throat."

"Let me see," said Ferguson--"that was Sir Edwin Goodchild, wasn't it? A

good sort--I know him well. Any more?"

"Yes. Lots more. I want that man who sweeps the crossing just outside

the club. He always seemed to me to be full of character. His name is

Timbs, and I don't know his address. But in this case perhaps you'd

better not write. See him personally. Could you get me a nice

Suffragette?"

"Certainly," said Ferguson. "Any particular one?"

"No. Just an ordinary, plain Suffragette. Also the editor of _Happy

Homes_. Likewise the Unconquerable Belgian. I don't know at which of the

halls he's wrestling now, but you can find out."

"Suppose his trainer won't let him come?"

"My dear Ferguson, you know very well how to deal with a case like that.

There are solid inducements that influence opinion."

"True. Would you like the girl who does my nails?"

"Your manicurist? Yes, that's an excellent idea. We shall also need a

Cabinet Minister, a nice specimen of a modern gilded youth, and somebody

prominent in the Salvation Army."

The list was finally made out. Ferguson looked at it reflectively. "I

suppose you wouldn't ask me too," he said. "I wish to goodness you

would!"

"You can come if you've got any decent clothes," said Garth,

sardonically. "Behave yourself decently, mind. Don't giggle."

"Right," said Ferguson. "This will be the day of my life. You know all

your servants will give notice, of course. But that doesn't matter, you

can get others."

"It might simplify things," said Mr Garth, "if I took some rooms at the

Ritz and gave the luncheon there. Arrange that for me, will you?"

"Certainly. And the date?"

"You'll want a little time to get the gang together. Say four weeks from

to-day."

* * * * *

Mr Ferguson needed all his tact to get them together. Lady Longshore, it

is true, expressed herself as willing to meet anybody except her own

relations. But Eustace Richards, on being told of the idea of the party,

said quite frankly that he preferred to mix with his equals. "The devil

of it is to find 'em," said Ferguson. Richards, still frank, admitted

that in the present state of dramatic art there might be something in

that. He decided to attend. A Suffragette was caught by the bait of the

Cabinet Minister, who subsequently refused on hearing of the

Suffragette. Sir Edwin Goodchild, the editor of _Happy Homes_, the

manicure lady, and Colonel Harriet Stokes, of the Salvation Army,

accepted at once. Mr Timbs, who swept the crossing outside the club,

was suspicious and took longer to decide. "Look 'ere, Mr Ferguson," he

said, "is it strite? You aren't gettin' anythin' up for me, eh? I've got

a good suit o' clothes, so far as that goes; one I've kept for funerals,

so far. But I don't want to put that on for nothing. Barrin' sells, now,

is it strite?" With renewed assurances Ferguson secured him. The lady of

the post-office began with a direct refusal, which started in the third

person and trailed off into the first. It said that she had not the

honour of Mr Garth's acquaintance, and that she was at a loss to

understand, and so on. Ferguson returned to the attack, and,

metaphorically, dangled the Dowager Countess of Longshore before her.

This failing, he changed his fly, and caught her with the Archdeacon.

The Archdeacon had known her father, and seemed to Miss Bostock to

guarantee everything. It was not absolutely fair, as the Archdeacon had

a professional engagement in the North on that day, and had been

compelled to refuse. Mrs Pringle, however, would be present, and, as

Ferguson said in self-justification, Mrs Pringle was more archidiaconal

than any archdeacon living. The Unconquerable Belgian accepted in a

letter written by Mr Savage, his trainer. Mr Savage expressed a hope

that the Unconquerable would not be pressed to drink, and that he would

be able to get away for a professional engagement at four o'clock.

* * * * *

On the day appointed, Lady Longshore was the first guest to be

announced.

"Came early on purpose," she said. "This is to be a freak lunch, so

Fergy says, and I want to get the hang of it."

"It's simplicity itself," said Garth. "You are going to meet people whom

you have never met before. Conventions that would interfere with this

are abandoned. You will not, for instance, sit next to me."

"Nor to me," added Mr Ferguson. "But bear up."

"Don't be a fool, Fergy, and tell me all about it."

Ferguson glanced at a plan of the table. "On your right hand, Lady

Longshore, you will have Mr Timbs, who sweeps one of the principal

crossings in St James's Street, on your left will be Mr Pudbrook, who

edits that serviceable kitchen weekly, _Happy Homes_. But the table is

oval, and we hope that the conversation will be general."

"Well, it's not half a bad idea. Let me look at the rest of 'em." She

snatched the plan from the secretary's hand. "Thank Heaven, I haven't

got Eustace Richards--these mummers make me angry. Here, who's this?"

Monsieur Renard had just been announced.

"That," said Ferguson, in a low voice, "is Monsieur Renard, better known

as the Unconquerable Belgian. You may have seen him on the stage."

"Quite a good deal of him--_meme trop_," said the Countess.

In the meantime the Belgian extended a hand like a twenty-pound York

ham. He was an enormous athlete, whose sweet temper had not yet been

injured by his prolonged war with fat. He was of great simplicity, and

his forehead ran back at a gentle slope from his eyebrows to the back of

his head. Intelligent? _Mais que voulez-vous que je vous dise?_ Can one

have everything? His clothes were of the best quality and of the latest

fashion. Let us be content.

Duncan Garth grasped some of the extended hand. "This is most kind of

you, Monsieur Renard. We have all admired your prowess, and are

delighted to have the chance to know you a little better."

The Belgian was slow and self-possessed. "Thank--you," he said.

"We shall have to behave ourselves," laughed Garth, "or you'll be

throwing all of us out of the window."

"But no," said the Unconquerable, seriously. "That will not be so. My

manager does not permit me to do anything of that kind, unless arranged

with him."

"It would be an excellent advertisement," said Garth. "Just you think it

over." He turned to some new arrivals.

At this moment Ferguson laid a manicured hand on the Belgian's almighty

arm. "Pardon me, Monsieur Renard, but the Countess of Longshore is most

anxious that you should be presented to her."

"That is all right. I kom," said the placid wrestler.

The new arrivals were Miss Bostock of the post-office, Sir Edwin

Goodchild of Harley Street, and Mr Pudbrook of _Happy Homes_. Miss

Bostock was tailor-made, smooth-haired, rather hygienic about the boots,

and wore pince-nez. She looked as if she would have been handsomer if

she had been happier. Her voice shook a little as she responded to Mr

Garth's most respectful salutation, but her nervousness was not too

apparent.

"Is--is the Archdeacon here, Mr Garth?" she inquired. "He used to know

my father slightly."

"The Archdeacon regrets--a conference at York. But that is Mrs Pringle

just coming in. Let me take you up to her."

Sir Edwin Goodchild took Mr Garth's secretary aside. "I say, Fergy," he

said, "what the deuce is all this?"

"This?" said Ferguson, innocently. "This is a private reception-room at

the Ritz. Style, Louis Quinze or thereabouts. Through those folding

doors, when at the appointed time they are opened, we enter the

luncheon-room. There we eat huitres_ Lucullus, consomme norvegienne,

filets_--"

"Now, don't talk nonsense."

"Nonsense, man? Considering I constructed the menu myself, I--"

"Yes, but the people. Look at that lot just come in."

"My poor lost sheep, I'll tell you just two things. Firstly, we are

eccentric millionaires. Secondly, you will be seated at lunch between

Colonel Harriet Stokes, of the Salvation Army, and Miss Paul, a manicure

lady."

"Let me out. This is a nightmare."

"No, it's a fact, and I'll prove it to you by introducing to your kind

attention Mr Pudbrook, the editor of _Happy Homes_. He somewhat

interferes with your profession by giving remedies for black-heads and

indigestion in his paper on alternate weeks. But don't let that

prejudice you against him."

Certainly, the "lot" to which Sir Edwin referred looked strange enough

in their present _entourage_. Mr Timbs wore a complete suit of black

broadcloth, alleviated by new brown shoes, white socks, and a very large

crimson silk handkerchief. His expression combined curiously the

confident and the furtive. Those in his immediate neighbourhood were

conscious of a blended fragrance of benzine and yellow soap. A

white-faced woman with big eyes, severely uniformed, was in conversation

with him, and Mr Timbs was choosing his language with unusual care. Miss

Edith Stunt, the Suffragette, had faced meetings in Trafalgar Square,

and had nothing more to fear. Her fanatical eyes looked round eagerly

for an opportunity to say a good word. At present Duncan Garth was

talking to Mrs Gust, a nicely-dressed lady, slightly mad. The death of

her husband under treatment had not shaken her faith in Christian

Science, any more than his life had shaken her belief in matrimony.

Garth himself had discovered her, and had directed that she should be of

the party.

Miss Vera Paul, the manicurist, was talking to Ferguson. She was a

remarkably pretty girl, but there were many others who wished to speak

to Ferguson. He handed her over to Mrs Pringle, and promised her that

she should be next to him at luncheon. The Unconquerable Belgian bore

down on Ferguson, carrying in his hand a copy of the menu, with which

Ferguson had thoughtfully provided him. He tapped it with a heavy finger

and said plaintively: "You excuse me. I cannot eat moch this food."

Ferguson's suggestion of a porter-house steak was accepted. At the same

moment Timbs approached him with care, as of one who stalked big game.

"You'll keep your eye on me, sir," said Timbs. "You told me it was

strite, and it's to you I looks. I don't want to do anything I didn't

ought."

"My dear chap," said Ferguson, with candour, "we want you to do the

things you didn't ought."

Timbs would have pursued the conversation, but he was put aside by Miss

Edith Stunt, who wished to know if she would have an opportunity to say

a few words to the company. And she was put aside by Harriet Stokes, who

wished to know if she could send round a collecting-card. And Harriet

Stokes was obliterated by Mr Pudbrook, who wished to know if he could

get a few words on private business with Mr Garth.

Then came the arrival of the last guest. Mr Eustace Richards made a

splendid entrance; he was a quarter of an hour late and gracefully

apologetic. "An unexpected rehearsal, my dear fellow," he said to Garth

in a clearly-articulated whisper that carried to every part of the room,

"Royal command for next Friday. Quite unexpected. Gratifying, eh?"

The big folding-doors opened. Ferguson flew around with his plan of the

table, showing people where they were to sit. So far Mr Eustace Richards

had hardly glanced at the company. He did not look much at the audience

when he was acting, and he was almost always acting. But now he

murmured to Garth: "My dear fellow, you warned me--but what have you

done?"

"Don't quite know yet," said Garth, drily.

* * * * *

Mr Ferguson had his own little suite of rooms at the house in Park Lane.

He dined at his club that night, and was back again by nine o'clock to

check once more some figures of considerable importance. The work only

took him a few minutes, and he was just finishing it when Duncan Garth

entered, wearing the dinner-jacket and black tie of the domestic life.

"Hallo!" said Ferguson. "Thought you were dining at the Silchesters'."

"So I was," said Garth, dejectedly, "but I didn't." He selected a cigar

from his secretary's cabinet.

"Cheaper for you, anyhow," said Ferguson. "His Grace meant to borrow

money to-night."

"I'm not a fool," said Garth, wearily, "and I'm not lending money to the

Duke of Silchester. How did you think it went this afternoon?"

"What? The lunch? Of course it was very, very funny."

"Or slightly tragic," said Garth, as he took an easy-chair. "Put people

into new circumstances and you can always judge them. I've got a low

opinion of the human race to-night, Fergy."

"But there were nice points," said Ferguson. "I like the self-centred,

complete indifference of our friend Renard. He's a headless Hercules. I

mean, his head is the only thing against him. It's a loss, too, that is

easily excused. You saw how Lady Longshore, and Mrs Pringle, and Colonel

Harriet Stokes of the Salvation Army were anxious to please that lump of

beef."

"Of course I saw it. That's one of the reasons why I call the thing a

tragedy. By the way, you can go over our list and draw a line through

the Archdeacon and his wife."

"Certainly," said Ferguson. "Might one ask why?"

"Because I hate the type," said Garth. "Miss Bostock's father was a

curate, had been at college with the Archdeacon, and knew him fairly

well. Mrs Pringle snubbed Miss Bostock. She was afraid she could not

remember all the curates that her husband might have happened to meet.

She also snubbed Pudbrook. When she saw the nature of the party she

would have left but for Lady Longshore, who, to do her credit, does not

care one curse about anybody on this earth or elsewhere. She was almost

affectionate to Timbs when Lady Longshore repeated his stories. She was

quite nice to your manicurist girl. She recognised the charm of the

Unconquerable Belgian. But she snubbed Miss Bostock and she snubbed

Pudbrook. She admits the hopeless and snubs the hopeful. She is a

mixture of the coward and the bully. I don't like it, and I've no more

to do with it. Strike them off, Fergy. I shall feel happier when it's

done."

Ferguson took down an alphabetical list, turned up the letter "P," and

put a black ink cross where it was required. "I wonder what this has

cost you," he said cheerfully.

"You paid the bill. Nothing, anyhow."

"The Salvationist got a subscription, and so did Mrs Gust. The

Suffragette also hit you. I think you have promised to be manicured. Mr

Pudbrook owns half his paper, and the printer owns the other half. They

are not doing too well, and they are thinking of a limited company. You

know best how far you have come into it. Eustace Richards, in spite of

his jabber, has done no good with his last two things. He stayed with

you for some time. If he was not suggesting that you should release him

from the people who are financing him at present, then, of course, it's

my mistake."

"You're a clear-sighted chap," said Garth, "and you've mentioned nothing

which is very far out. There are even some things which you might have

mentioned and have omitted. They don't really matter. I've done what was

wanted. I've even shown Lady Longshore how to make the money she wants.

But that's not what's worrying me."

"Give it a name," said Ferguson.

The door opened. "A young person of the name of Bostock wishes to see

you, sir," said the butler. "I have told her that you are not in the

habit of seeing people at this time of the evening, but she seemed

rather pressing."

"In here, please," said Garth.

"Let's see," said Ferguson, "Miss Bostock left before the show was

over."

"She did," said Garth; "and I want to know why."

In the meantime the butler had returned to Miss Bostock with a totally

different manner. So far as the rules went, he had made no mistake, but

there were exceptions, of course. On sight, Miss Bostock was a young

person. On further investigation she was a young lady whom Mr Duncan

Garth wished to see, and that made a difference.

She entered the room with perfect composure, wearing the same clothes

that she had worn at the luncheon-party.

"Perhaps I shouldn't have come," she said, "but there are things I want

to say. I want to know why you did that."

"You'll sit down, won't you?" said Garth. "What is it precisely we are

talking about?"

"Why did you give that luncheon? Why did you make me come to it? I

refused at first, you know. Then Mr Ferguson came to see me and

persuaded me. He told me the Archdeacon was coming, and that seemed like

a mutual acquaintance. I think if he had been there he wouldn't have

been as rude to me as his wife was. I dare say, if I had told her I was

a general servant, she would have been as sweet to me as she was to that

half-drunken crossing-sweeper, or that Belgian brute, or some of the

other people whom you ought not to have asked me to meet."

"Yes," said Mr Ferguson, cheerfully. "Lady Longshore also is very

unconventional, isn't she?"

"I'm not speaking about that," said Miss Bostock, doggedly. "The

rudeness of that lady to me is a small personal matter easily forgotten.

It's the ghastly humiliation of the whole thing that makes me sick and

savage."

There was a moment's silence. "Ferguson," said Garth, "there was that

letter."

"Yes," said Ferguson, "I'll see to it," and passed out of the room.

"Now, then," said Garth. "What's the trouble, Miss Bostock?"

"The trouble is that the whole of us were merely a show got up for your

amusement. You gave us a lunch that we might make fools of ourselves.

Fish out of water are very absurd, aren't they? But it's cruel to take

them out of water and to watch them dying, all the same. That

luncheon-party was the most brutal thing done in London to-day, and you

were the brute who did it. What harm was I doing? Why did you drag me

into it?"

"Five or six weeks ago," said Garth, "I met you for the first time. It

was in the post-office. You asked me if I'd got any eyes in my head."

"I remember now," said Miss Bostock. "I ought not to have said it. I

think the tick of the telegraph gets on my nerves. You were not the

first, too, and the notices were up clear enough. Still, why couldn't

you have reported me? That would have been the right way to punish me."

"No," said Garth, "I did not want to punish you. I distinctly liked the

spirit and the temper with which you spoke to me. You will understand,

perhaps, that I get rather too much of the other kind of thing. I had no

wish whatever to humiliate you. I did wish to amuse myself. You may be

glad to hear that I have not done it. Is there anything I can do?"

"Nothing now," said the girl, contemptuously.

"I think there is," said Garth, and rang the bell. He sent the servant

to fetch Mr Ferguson.

"I say, Ferguson," said Garth, "can you tell me what the price of that

luncheon was?"

"Eight shillings a head, exclusive of the wine, of course."

"Let me see, Miss Bostock," said Garth, "I think you drank water."

"Yes, yes, I see it now," said Miss Bostock, eagerly. She fumbled

clumsily at her pocket, and produced an emaciated purse. She took out

half a sovereign. "There is your money. Can you give me change?"

Garth did not carry money. Ferguson handed Garth a florin, and Garth

gravely handed it to Miss Bostock.

"Now I can breathe again," she said. "I am going now. Good-night."

Garth followed her out, along the corridor and into the hall. Servants

were waiting at the door. A sign from Garth dismissed them. As he held

the door open for her, she turned to him, hesitated, and then spoke.

"I thought at lunch to-day that the doctor was the only gentleman there.

I--I am not so sure about it."

"If I were ten years younger," said Garth, "I think I should ask you to

marry me. Good-night."

He stood watching her as she passed down the steps into Park Lane.

POST-MORTEM

I

After dining for the last time at his club, Evan Hurst returned at once

to his flat in Jermyn Street. The greater part of his arrangements had

already been made, and most of his things packed; but there were still a

few details to settle, and he was to leave for the north early on the

following morning.

Yet when he entered his room he did not proceed at once to

letter-writing or to business of any kind. He flung himself down in an

easy-chair. He felt unaccountably tired. All day he had had business to

attend to, necessary no doubt for the carrying out of his somewhat wild

and romantic scheme, none the less wearisome to a man of poetical

temperament and of poor physique. He was a man of slight build, with

fair and rather fluffy hair, a pretty, thin-lipped mouth, and plaintive

blue eyes. To the world in general his lot would have seemed a fairly

easy one. He had sufficient means of his own; and no one in any way

depended upon him. His volume of poems, _Under the Sea_, published a

year or two before, had excited a great deal of public attention and

some controversy; what had seemed genius to one critic had seemed

insanity to another. He was not unpopular at his club although he was

thought to be slightly ridiculous. It was not supposed that he had any

trouble of any kind. Women, of whom in his poems he wrote with such

knowledge and such fervency, had never really come much into his life.

As he lay there and smoked endless cigarettes, he admitted the truth to

himself. It was vanity that was at the root of it. He had seen the

talented and remarkable Evan Hurst dwindling down into nobody again.

Once it was supposed that Evan Hurst was dead, dead by his own act, and

leaving such strange communications behind him, interest would revive.

People would speak again of _Under the Sea_, his unpublished poems would

be produced, and there would be obituary notices. There would be, for a

while at least, breathless interest in the poet and the suicide, and he,

alive and not dead, under another name and acting another part, would

read and enjoy it all. To carry out his scheme meant many sacrifices,

but the fascination of it was too strong for him, and the success of it

seemed to be certain.

His sensations were really very much those of a man who actually knows

that he is about to die. He had withdrawn a large balance from his bank

and transferred it to another bank in the name which he now intended to

take, but it was essential if Evan Hurst were to die that he should

leave money behind him. That money he willingly sacrificed. It was

enough if he retained for his new incarnation sufficient for a

reasonable livelihood. It annoyed him far more to think that he must

leave also his books, the collections, the furniture and the treasures

of his Jermyn Street flat. They had all come together slowly, and all

represented in a way his individuality. The scattering of them by public

auction would be like the disintegration of death. He could imagine

already the notice in the catalogue of a second-hand bookseller offering

that exquisitely-bound set of Huysman's works, "containing the

book-plate of the late Evan Hurst." There were prints and engravings

that from long affection and study had given him almost a feeling as if

he had had a part in their creation. The Durer, a splendid impression,

would fetch fifty pounds at least. Men at the club would remember this

evening. They would recall that Evan Hurst was there only a few days

before his death, and that even then they had remarked how gloomy and

silent he seemed to be.

He laughed bitterly and aloud, flung down his cigarette and passed into

his bedroom. There for a while he packed energetically, but soon he had

to stop for a feeling of intense and almost painful weariness came over

him again. After all there would be time to finish the packing in the

morning. He decided to go to bed.

On the following afternoon he left King's Cross for Salsay on the

Yorkshire coast.

II

Salsay is a small fishing village that has not yet suffered from the

curse of popularity. Evan Hurst put up at the one hotel in the place and

constituted its one permanent visitor. Occasionally a commercial

traveller would arrive one day and leave on the next, and would talk as

much as possible to Evan Hurst. Evan Hurst, in return, would talk as

little as possible, consistent with bare politeness, to the commercial

traveller. Every morning he bathed from the shore before breakfast at a

point at some considerable distance from the village. Here there was a

small cave in the cliffs, a useful shelter if rain came on, and useful

to Evan Hurst for other purposes; for it was here that gradually, bit by

bit, he collected the slender outfit with which he was to begin the

world in his new character on the day that Evan Hurst was supposed to

commit suicide. His plan was simplicity itself. He would go out to bathe

as usual, and he would not return. His clothes would be found on the

shore, and in the pocket of his coat there would be a letter to the

landlord of the hotel leaving no doubt whatever as to his intentions.

In the meantime, in a little cave, he would have altered his appearance,

put on different clothes, and from there struck out for the nearest

railway station. In the evening he would be in Dover, and next day in

Paris, without one tie left between what he had once been and what he

was now going to be.

He looked forward to the change with pleasurable excitement. It was

something more than vanity after all. As Evan Hurst he had begun in a

_role_ which he was not competent to sustain; to have continued in it

would have been to disappoint the public opinion of him. In a new part

he could write as he liked; act as he liked; talk as he liked. There

would be no preconceived opinion of him in the world; it would be all

for him to make with the benefit of his experience of his past blunders.

He took immense care with the composition of that brief letter to the

landlord. It ran as follows:--

"DEAR SIR,--It would be impossible to explain to you the reasons why I

intend this morning to take my life, but undoubtedly some apology is

due to you for any inconvenience which my death may cause you. I leave

behind me at the hotel a quantity of money which will be more than

sufficient to discharge my obligations to you. Nor have I any

explanation to offer to the coroner and the British jury. These good

people will return their usual verdict. Not to be interested in so

extremely uninteresting a thing as my life has become, would be a

clear proof to them of insanity. I shall swim out so long as my

strength lasts, and the end will come under the sea.--Faithfully

yours,

"EVAN HURST."

He did not quite like it now that he had finished it. The way in which

he had introduced the title of his book seemed to him to be a little on

the cheap side, but at any rate it was a letter which would call for a

good deal of comment. He promised himself much amusing and interesting

reading when the English papers reached Paris a few days later.

The morning came at last; grey, overcast, and misty, and more likely to

turn to great heat than to rain. Evan Hurst looked at himself in the

glass and laughed. He had spent some hours in his room the night before

dyeing his fluffy hair. Unquestionably it was an improvement to his

appearance. There was no danger that it would be observed on his leaving

the hotel; for he wore his towels slung round his neck, and a

broad-brimmed straw hat. As he walked towards the cave he now felt an

unaccountable nervousness. True, but few people went that way, and even

if they entered the cave his store of clothes was so carefully hidden

that it was unlikely that anybody would find them. Still, there was

just a chance, and it would be maddening if just at the last some trifle

occurred to balk his scheme. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found

everything just as he had left it. In less than half an hour the change

was complete; the clothes of that fluffy poet, Evan Hurst, were disposed

with a careful carelessness on the rocks above high-water mark, with the

letter to the landlord in the pocket of the coat, and Evan Hurst, in his

new incarnation, strode away in a blue serge suit, black felt hat, and

black boots, carrying a small bag, which contained a change of linen and

the articles of his toilet. The rest of his luggage was to be purchased

in London.

For the first mile or so his way lay along the beach, and he was careful

to walk on the sand, where, in half an hour, the sea would obliterate

his footprints. His feelings were at first those of amusement. In every

little detail of his clothes he was so different from what he had ever

been before. He speculated whether he would not perforce become quite a

different kind of man under the clothes' influence. Already he felt

himself a stouter person, readier to tackle the world and deal with it

properly. His satisfaction was intense. He was still meditating on the

subject when he reached the path up the cliffs; a perfectly easy and

safe path with a few low rocks between him and it. As he clambered over

the rocks, inconvenienced by the bag that he was carrying, he slipped

and fell, and lay quite still.

The hours passed, and now the sun blazed. The waves had already touched

one of the black boots. They crept up to the head and came back with a

pinky stain. At last, when the figure was fully covered, it gave a

sudden and ungainly movement, and for a little while floated with arms

and legs shot out queerly like the limbs of a starfish. The black felt

hat had drifted far away, and tossed about on the waves with absurdity.

Then, slowly, the figure disappeared from sight.

THE GIRL WITH THE BEAUTIFUL HAIR

[By my own unaided intelligence I chose the exactly right spot at the

farther end of the orchard, and with my own hand I slung the hammock.

Now that the day is hot and luncheon is over, I take my book and go

thither to reap the fruits of my labour. And, behold, the hammock is

already occupied with four large cushions and one small girl--a solemn

and inscrutable girl who hears to the end a complaint of the cruelty

and injustice of her trespass, and then says kindly that I may sit on

the grass.

"Thank you. I am glad you do not want all the grass as well."

I do the best that I can with the grass, and open my book, and the

voice from the hammock bids me to tell a story.

"What, with no better audience than that?"

It appears that this is the charm. She has never had a story all to

herself before.]

There once was a girl who had very long and very beautiful hair.

(_As long as yours? Much longer and much more beautiful. And if you

interrupt me again, I will stop this story, empty you out of the

hammock, tie you to a tree, and teach you as much as I can remember of

the French gender rules. Very well, then._)

As I was saying--there once was a girl who had very long and very

beautiful hair, and she knew it. Her sisters, who were as plain-spoken

as sisters generally are, were in the habit of saying that she was a

perfect peacock. Her hair was very much the colour of a chestnut, and

she took the greatest possible care of it. It was a rule of life with

her, when she had nothing else to do, to brush her hair. Frequently also

she brushed it when she had other things to do. She never would have it

cut. She even refused a lock of it to her own mother. When she went out

for walks with her sisters she listened attentively as people passed

her, because sometimes they said things about her hair which she liked

very much. Then she would try not to look pleased, and when a girl who

is really pleased tries to look as if she did not care, she looks

perfectly horrid. Her sisters remarked upon it.

Her father, who was a good and wise man, explained to her how wicked

vanity was, especially vanity about one's hair. He showed her that

personal attractions, especially if connected in any way with the hair,

were worthless as compared with the intellectual and moral attributes.

On the other hand, her mother took her to a photographer's and had her

taken in fourteen different positions, and they all made such beautiful

pictures that the photographer nearly committed suicide because he was

not allowed to exhibit them in his shop window.

She reached the age at which every good Christian girl wishes to have

long dresses and do her hair up into a lump, but this girl (whose name

was Elsa, of course) would not have her hair done up, and stamped with

her foot and was rude to the governess. In the end, of course, Elsa had

to submit, for it is very wicked for girls of a certain age to wear

their hair down. But she became extremely ingenious. She had ways of

doing that hair so that it would not stop up, but tumbled down

unexpectedly and caused great admiration. She would then pretend to be

confused and embarrassed. Now, when a girl who is not in the least

confused and embarrassed tries to look so, she looks simply silly. Her

sisters told her so. Every single girl friend she had, and many who were

only acquaintances, had seen that hair in its native glory. Some of

these raved about it to Elsa's sisters, and were surprised that the

sisters did not share their enthusiasm.

"She has such a lot of it," the friends would say.

"She thinks such a lot of it," the sisters would answer.

Now, Elsa and her sisters were not the only girls in the world, and they

did not know all the rest; consequently a girl called Kate came to them

as something of a novelty. As she was called Kate, she was, of course,

quite good. Katherine may be proud, and Kitty may be frivolous, but Kate

is solid. If you ask me if Kate is clever, I reply that she is a good

housekeeper. If you ask me if she is pretty, I change the subject

rapidly. There was nothing dazzling about this Kate. She was just Kate.

It is a sad truth that it is the people who are naturally the nicest to

look at who take the greatest trouble to look nice. The woman who, so

far as her face is concerned, makes the best of a bad job, is very rare.

Kate was not a beauty, but she was sensible and resigned. She dressed

herself very quickly in things that wore well. It was her boast that she

could do her hair without a looking-glass, and everybody who saw her

hair believed it. But as it happened, when Kate met Elsa, a change came

over her.

"Your hair is perfectly divine," she said to Elsa.

Elsa tried to be politely bored.

"So kind of you to say so," she said. "I get frightfully sick of my old

wig myself. It's an endless bother."

"And you do it so beautifully," said Kate. "I do wish you'd give me some

idea for my hair, so that it wouldn't look awful."

"It isn't awful at all," said Elsa, politely. "I don't think I should

change the way of doing it if I were you."

Then she went into elaborate technical details and showed Kate that the

thing was bad and that improvement was impossible. Of course, she did

not use these words, and was sweetly delicate about it.

Now, that night, as Elsa was having her own hair brushed, a horrible

suspicion came over her. She put it aside as a thing perfectly absurd.

It might have been a trick of the looking-glass. It might have been her

own imagination. It did not keep her awake for a moment. But next

morning one of her sisters came into her room, looked at her, and said:

"What an idiot you were to have your hair cut!"

"I have not had it cut," said Elsa, furiously. "It's the same as it

always was."

"Rubbish," said the sister. "It's three inches shorter at least."

"It's not," said Elsa; "and I wish you'd go away. I can't get on

properly while you're hanging about talking."

The sister went away, and Elsa flew to the looking-glass. The cold

morning light confirmed her suspicions of the night before. Her

sister was perfectly right. Elsa's hair was undoubtedly three inches

shorter.

That afternoon Elsa secretly and surreptitiously went to a great hair

specialist. She had seen his advertisement, and she felt that here she

might at any rate know the worst. He looked at her hair and said that it

had become shorter from a shrinkage in the cells, owing to undue

epithelial activity of the cranium. It was as well that she came to him

when she did. As it was, if she would rub in a little of his relaxative

she would have nothing to fear. He then sold her a fourpenny pot of

pomatum for three guineas, washed his hands, and went home to tea.

But the pomatum was quite ineffectual. Every day her hair seemed to be a

little shorter and a little thinner. This was particularly the case when

she had been behaving like a peacock or like a spiteful cat. It reached

a point when all her friends who met her exclaimed: "Why, Elsa, what on

earth have you done with your hair?"

Then she would smile sweetly and say: "Brushed it. What did you think?"

But inwardly she was a mad woman.

About this time she saw the advertisement of the Indian hair doctor, and

she thought she could but try. I do not think the man was really Indian,

I know he was not really a doctor, and I fancy he did not know much

about hair. But he said that Elsa's case was extremely grave, and that

in another week she would have been entirely bald. She must take a

course of scalp friction; twelve applications for three guineas the

application. She took them; and at the end of the course her hair was

nearly all gone, her temper was quite gone, her money was almost gone,

and she did not want to see anybody or to do anything except die.

And then unwittingly she did what was best for herself. To escape the

sweet sympathy of her friends and relations she went away all by herself

to live in a little cottage in a forest. It is good for a girl who has

been seeing too many people to live all by herself for a while. It is

good for a girl who has been long in a crowded town to go away into the

forest solitude. Your soul must go to the cleaner, just like your

gloves.

Now that there was no one to sympathise with her loss, and no one to

attract by her beautiful hair even if she had still had it, she could

begin to think of other things. And she thought about squirrels, and

nuts, and blackberries, and sunsets, and streams that made silvery lines

down the green hillsides. And every morning she went all by herself to a

cottage two miles off and fetched milk for herself.

The old woman who kept the cows at this cottage was tall and old and

always polite, but also she was always very sad. She had the face of one

who never ceased to suffer. After Elsa had been two months in her

cottage she suddenly saw that this woman had always looked really sad.

The sadness of other people had never mattered to her in the least

before; but now one day she asked the old woman why this was, and if

there were anything that she might do for her.

Then the old woman said: "I have a daughter and she was very beautiful.

None that saw her ever forgot how beautiful she was. And she fell ill of

a strange disease so that her whole face became loathesome. No one but I

can bear to look on her, lest their dreams should be haunted for ever."

"And she lives here, this poor daughter of yours?" asked Elsa.

"Yes; she lies in the room upstairs. They tell me that she will now soon

be dead."

"I will come up and talk to her," said Elsa, "and help to nurse her, for

you must often be away on your farm."

"No," said the old woman, "that is too much for you to do. I tell you

that no one but myself can bear it. You must not see her."

"Look," said Elsa. And then she took off the big kerchief that she

always wore over her head. "I had pretty hair once," she said, "and I

have lost it all. I can bear anything, and I want to help you."

Then Elsa went upstairs into a room which was darkened, and even in that

dim light she could see that this old woman's daughter, who was once

very beautiful, had now become painful to behold. Elsa was frightened,

but tried not to show it, and a girl who is frightened and tries not to

show it, very frequently does not look nearly such a fool as she thinks.

She remained there a long time, and when she came out her face was quite

white, and she wanted to go back to her cottage and cry.

But every day after that until the end came she went to see the sick

girl who loved and adored her. And the end came one afternoon quite

quietly. And the old woman did not weep at that time, but she blessed

Elsa and went out, for the cows were waiting to be milked, and that must

not be left.

Next morning when Elsa awoke it was very late, and the sun was streaming

into her room. For a while she lay with her eyes closed, thinking over

all that had happened. Each visit to the sick girl had been a separate

terror to her, but now she grieved that the girl was dead, and wondered

in her mind if there were none other for whom she might find something

to do.

At last, since it was a shame to lie so late, she got up, and, behold,

masses of beautiful chestnut-coloured hair fell far down over her white

shoulders! She rubbed her eyes and said that she must be dreaming. But

no, it had really happened. Her mirror echoed the truth. The glory of

her pretty head had come back to it as strangely as it had gone. So that

afternoon she mused what she would do as, sitting in the garden of her

cottage, she made a wreath of white lilies.

And the next day she left her cottage in the wood and went back to her

own home; and her sisters were all delighted to see her, and praised her

beautiful hair, and were glad that it had grown again so quickly. Yet

one of them said secretly to another: "Now she will be as vain and

horrible as ever."

But, as it happened, she was not vain and horrible; she was really quite

nice, so that the prince who married her loved her as much for the

sweetness of her heart as for her angel's face and her beautiful long

hair.

THE WIDOWER

The decision of Edward Morris to marry again was one of the few

practical things of his record. He had married first at the age of

eighteen without the knowledge of his parents. His wife died two years

later. He had no children by her. At her death he was desolate.

He was as desolate, that is, as one can be at twenty. He was free from

the annoying minor-poet habit of advertising his afflictions, but it was

quite clear to himself that there was nothing more left. Yet it is idle

for a man to say he will stop when Nature, his proprietor, says that he

will go on. There is no comedy at ninety, and there is no tragedy at

twenty. After he had deposited the remains of his wife in Brompton

cemetery--she had a strong aversion to cremation and inwardly believed

that it destroyed the immortal soul--he went off into the country,

selecting a village where he knew nobody. Here he learned by heart

considerable portions of the poems of Heine, neglected to return the

call of the rector, and bored himself profusely. It must not be

understood that he resented the boredom. That was what life was to be in

future, a continuous dreariness. After a brief stay in the village he

went off to Paris to study art. At the time when he thought of giving

himself to music all noticed his ability in painting. When he took to

art they remembered that he had musical talent. A year later, when he

returned to England to live the life of a hermit, to teach in song what

he had learned in sorrow, some said that he was a lost artist, and some

that he was a lost musician, and others that he was a well-defined case

of dilettantism. It is, however, difficult to be a hermit in London.

London has many tentacles; it puts them out and draws you into the

liveliest part of itself. A claim of relationship, an old friendship, a

piece of medical advice, a chance meeting--anything may become a

tentacle. Almost before he knows it the misanthropical hermit is dragged

from his shell and is writing that he has much pleasure in accepting her

very kind invitation for the thirteenth, and wonders if that man in

Sackville Street will be able to make him some evening clothes in time,

his others being not so much clothes as a relic of those pre-hermit days

when his wife, his only love, still lived and took him out to dinners,

and would have the glass down in the hansoms. The thought that he

resented this last action at the time saddens him, but the acceptance is

posted. He is drawn into the vortex.

Once in, Edward Morris had to explain to himself how he got there.

Nobody else wanted any explanation. Nobody else knew that the first

time he took his hostess in to dinner he looked down the long table

towards his host's right hand and remembered. His explanation to himself

was that he did it to avoid comment. One could not wear one's heart on

one's coat sleeve. One must go somewhere and must do something. One must

unfortunately live, even when the savour of life has gone. So he lived,

and in living the savour of life came back again.

It was on a muggy December evening that he accompanied Lady Marchsea and

her eminent husband to a first-night performance. When the eminent man

was grumbling at the draught, and Lady Marchsea was, with justification,

admiring herself, her dress, and everything that was hers, Edward Morris

looked up. Out of the gloom of the box above him a brown-faced girl with

dark eyes, her chin leaning on her white gloves, bent forward and looked

down.

Yet it was not till the end of the first act that he asked who she was

and was told that she was nobody, but was apparently with the Martins,

who were very, very dear friends, and would Mr Morris take her round?

That was the beginning of it, and the end of it was his engagement to

Adela Constantia Graham, who was nobody. Everybody who knew Adela

Constantia knew that it was an excellent thing for her--a much wealthier

man than she had any reason to expect. Everyone who knew Edward Morris

knew that it was the best thing for him. "Ballast," said Lady Marchsea,

emphatically, "that is what marriage means to a man like Edward Morris.

He needs ballast; something to make him concentrate himself and trust

himself; something to encourage him and urge him on."

Her notions of the general uses of ballast were vague, but her

conviction was sincere that Edward Morris, happily re-married, would

achieve something in one, or possibly in all, of the arts. Her eminent

husband said: "Nice sort of man, but no good really." But still he paid

for the dinner-service with the sanctifying mark on the bottom of all

the plates, which they forwarded to Edward Morris a short time before

the wedding--the wedding which never took place.

About a week before the date fixed for that wedding it occurred to

Edward Morris in a moment of leisure--he was naturally very busy at the

time--that his first wife had been a jealous woman, and he wondered what

she would have thought and said if she had been alive. He could laugh at

the illogicality. If she had been alive there would have been nothing to

think or to say. The haunting face with the chin pressed on the white

gloves against the darkness at the back of the box would have been

merely a face and nothing more, and would not have haunted. He

collected his old love-letters and burned them. Other little relics of

his first wife he gathered together, had them placed in a box and

deposited at his bankers. The old life was done; the new life was

beginning. Yet one night as he stood in a darkened room with Adela

Constantia in his arms the door opened with a little quick click some

few inches. She stepped back from him, thinking it was a servant, and he

turned white, thinking, in a moment of madness, that it was someone

else; then he went to the door and opened it wider. No one was there.

* * * * *

The position of the widower who marries again is irritating to him if he

be, as Edward Morris was, a man of nice feeling. He has to say, and to

believe, that he loves as he never loved in his life before. Scraps of

used romance must be whipped up out of his respectable past to set

against the virginal fervour of the young woman who has just begun to

love him. Yet he feels that all this is an insult to the dead--to the

woman who loved him before. A man of the world has a happy habit of

forgetting and of ignoring. He may marry for the second or third time

quite easily. He takes nothing too seriously. He may order a new

overcoat, but he does not feel that the coat will be worthless unless he

swears and tries to believe that he never wore a coat like that before.

Morris, however, was a sentimentalist, and so he became irritated with

himself. The next step inevitably followed. He became irritated with his

dead wife. She had got her cold arms round his neck and was dragging him

down and holding him back from the joyful development of his life.

When in London it was his custom to visit her grave in Brompton cemetery

at regular intervals, once every month. During his engagement to Adela

Constantia he made up his mind that this regular visit must be dropped.

Some arrangement could be made to have the grave kept in decent order,

but he could not go near it again. He remembered having been told a

story of a widower who married again and went hand-in-hand with his

second wife to stand by the grave of the first. It had been told him as

something pathetic. He had never been able to see in it anything but a

subject for a humorous paper; Guy de Maupassant would have done wonders

with it. He settled the day when the last visit should be made. He

selected an appropriate wreath, in which everlastings and dead leaves

were symbolically interwoven. But that afternoon more than ever before

his hatred to his dead wife grew within him. He recollected her strange

belief with regard to cremation. Fire destroyed everything, even the

immortal soul, and it seemed as if fire destroyed love too. He

remembered that he had burnt her letters. As he drove down Regent

Street an old friend, a man whom he had not seen for some time,

recognised him. He stopped the cab and his friend came up.

"Why do I never see you now?" said the friend. "But of course I know.

Very much engaged aren't you? (That's not bad for an impromptu, by the

way.) I suppose you are going there now?"

"No," said Morris, "as a matter of fact I am not."

"Well, you are evidently going somewhere, and you carry a big box with

you with a florist's label on it, so all I can say is that if you are

not going there you ought to be."

Edward Morris laughed, and to laugh was the last touch of horror.

"Well," the friend said, "if you are really not going to see Miss Graham

I have no scruples in annexing you. Come round to the club for a game of

billiards."

"Thanks," said Morris, "I am afraid I am very busy this afternoon."

However, he let himself be persuaded. The box containing the wreath was

left in the charge of the hall-porter at the club. On the following day

Morris despatched the wreath to Brompton cemetery by a messenger-boy,

where the symbolical offering was deposited on the grave of Charles

Ernest Jessop, who died at the age of two and a half, and of whose death

or previous existence Morris was unaware. Messenger-boys are so

careless. Morris never even attempted to visit the cemetery again. It

was not only anger, it was not only hatred; it was also fear that kept

him away. He was assured in his own mind that the dead woman was awake

again and was watching him jealously.

The moment when he had just awoken from sleep was always a horrible one

for him. The fear of the dead woman was in his mind then and nothing

else was very clear. He left the electric light on all night and, as a

rule, slept fairly well and without any haunting or painful dreams. But

the moment of waking was always a trial. He kept on expecting to see

something that he never did see. He would not have wondered if, as he

awoke, someone had touched his hand, or the electric light had been

suddenly switched off.

Of course everybody noticed that he looked wretchedly ill. Adela

Constantia was in despair about his health. There were things about him

which were very queer; that he did not like dark rooms. That when he was

talking to her he would suddenly look over his shoulder--at nothing. The

comforting doctor told her that Morris has been very busy indeed with

the preparation for his married life and, the doctor added, a lot of

worry upsets the nerves. This is quite true.

* * * * *

On his wedding morning he certainly looked much fitter to be buried than

to be married. His best man gave him champagne and told him to hold his

head up more. The bride made an adorable and pathetic figure; a

beautiful young girl is always a pathetic figure on her wedding-morning.

Her sisters fluttered around her, ready to cry at the right moments. Her

father looked a little nervous and elated. He had had quite a long talk

with Lady Marchsea, whose husband was kept away by the toothache. The

ceremony went with its customary brilliance until that point when the

bridegroom was required to say: "I, Edward, take thee, Adela

Constantia." He said this in a loud voice, but he did not say "Adela

Constantia"; he gave another name. There was a moment's pause, and while

everybody was looking at everybody he fainted and fell.

At the inquest it was found that the blow on the head from the sharp

edge of the stone step satisfactorily accounted for the death. All the

evening papers had readable paragraphs headed "Tragic End to a

Fashionable Wedding Ceremony."

And Adela Constantia married somebody else.

And the dead woman went to sleep again.

THE UNFINISHED GAME

At Tanslowe, which is on the Thames, I found just the place that I

wanted. I had been born in the hotel business, brought up in it, and

made my living at it for thirty years. For the last twenty I had been

both proprietor and manager, and had worked uncommonly hard, for it is

personal attention and plenty of it which makes a hotel pay. I might

have retired altogether, for I was a bachelor with no claims on me and

had made more money than enough; but that was not what I wanted. I

wanted a nice, old-fashioned house, not too big, in a nice place with a

longish slack season. I cared very little whether I made it pay or not.

The Regency Hotel at Tanslowe was just the thing for me. It would give

me a little to do and not too much. Tanslowe was a village, and though

there were two or three public-houses, there was no other hotel in the

place, nor was any competition likely to come along. I was particular

about that, because my nature is such that competition always sets me

fighting, and I cannot rest until the other shop goes down. I had

reached a time of life when I did want to rest and did not want any more

fighting. It was a free house, and I have always had a partiality for

being my own master. It had just the class of trade that I

liked--principally gentlefolk taking their pleasure in a holiday on the

river. It was very cheap, and I like value for money. The house was

comfortable, and had a beautiful garden sloping down to the river. I

meant to put in some time in that garden--I have a taste that way.

The place was so cheap that I had my doubts. I wondered if it was

flooded when the river rose, if it was dropping to pieces with dry-rot,

if the drainage had been condemned, if they were going to start a

lunatic asylum next door, or what it was. I went into all these points

and a hundred more. I found one or two trifling drawbacks, and one

expects them in any house, however good--especially when it is an old

place like the Regency. I found nothing whatever to stop me from taking

the place.

I bought the whole thing, furniture and all, lock, stock and barrel, and

moved in. I brought with me my own head-waiter and my man-cook,

Englishmen both of them. I knew they would set the thing in the right

key. The head-waiter, Silas Goodheart, was just over sixty, with grey

hair and a wrinkled face. He was worth more to me than two younger men

would have been. He was very precise and rather slow in his movements.

He liked bright silver, clean table-linen, and polished glass.

Artificial flowers in the vases on his tables would have given him a

fit. He handled a decanter of old port as if he loved it--which, as a

matter of fact, he did. His manner to visitors was a perfect mixture of

dignity, respect and friendliness. If a man did not quite know what he

wanted for dinner, Silas had sympathetic and very useful suggestions. He

took, I am sure, a real pleasure in seeing people enjoy their luncheon

or dinner. Americans loved him, and tipped him out of all proportion. I

let him have his own way, even when he gave the thing away.

"Is the coffee all right here?" a customer asked after a good dinner.

"I cannot recommend it," said Silas. "If I might suggest, sir, we have

the Chartreuse of the old French shipping."

I overheard that, but I said nothing. The coffee was extract, for there

was more work than profit in making it good. As it was, that customer

went away pleased, and came back again and again, and brought his

friends too. Silas was really the only permanent waiter. When we were

busy I got one or two foreigners from London temporarily. Silas soon

educated them. My cook, Timbs, was an honest chap, and understood

English fare. He seemed hardly ever to eat, and never sat down to a

meal; he lived principally on beer, drank enough of it to frighten you,

and was apparently never the worse for it. And a butcher who tried to

send him second-quality meat was certain of finding out his mistake.

The only other man I brought with me was young Harry Bryden. He always

called me uncle, but as a matter of fact he was no relation of mine. He

was the son of an old friend. His parents died when he was seven years

old and left him to me. It was about all they had to leave. At this time

he was twenty-two, and was making himself useful. There was nothing

which he was not willing to do, and he could do most things. He would

mark at billiards, and played a good game himself. He had run the

kitchen when the cook was away on his holiday. He had driven the

station-omnibus when the driver was drunk one night. He understood

book-keeping, and when I got a clerk who was a wrong 'un, he was on to

him at once and saved me money. It was my intention to make him take his

proper place more when I got to the Regency; for he was to succeed me

when I died. He was clever, and not bad-looking in a gipsy-faced kind of

way. Nobody is perfect, and Harry was a cigarette-maniac. He began when

he was a boy, and I didn't spare the stick when I caught him at it. But

nothing I could say or do made any difference; at twenty-two he was old

enough and big enough to have his own way, and his way was to smoke

cigarettes eternally. He was a bundle of nerves, and got so jumpy

sometimes that some people thought he drank, though he had never in his

life tasted liquor. He inherited his nerves from his mother, but I

daresay the cigarettes made them worse.

I took Harry down with me when I first thought of taking the place. He

went over it with me and made a lot of useful suggestions. The old

proprietor had died eighteen months before, and the widow had tried to

run it for herself and made a mess of it. She had just sense enough to

clear out before things got any worse. She was very anxious to go, and I

thought that might have been the reason why the price was so low.

The billiard-room was an annexe to the house, with no rooms over it. We

were told that it wasn't used once in a twelvemonth, but we took a look

at it--we took a look at everything. The room had got a very neglected

look about it. I sat down on the platform--tired with so much walking

and standing--and Harry whipped the cover off the table. "This was the

one they had in the Ark," he said.

There was not a straight cue in the rack, the balls were worn and

untrue, the jigger was broken. Harry pointed to the board. "Look at

that, uncle," he said. "Noah had made forty-eight; Ham was doing nicely

at sixty-six; and then the Flood came and they never finished." From

neatness and force of habit he moved over and turned the score back.

"You'll have to spend some money here. My word, if they put the whole

lot in at a florin we're swindled." As we came out Harry gave a shiver.

"I wouldn't spend a night in there," he said, "not for a five-pound

note."

His nerves always made me angry. "That's a very silly thing to say," I

told him. "Who's going to ask you to sleep in a billiard-room?"

Then he got a bit more practical, and began to calculate how much I

should have to spend to make a bright, up-to-date billiard-room of it.

But I was still angry.

"You needn't waste your time on that," I said, "because the place will

stop as it is. You heard what Mrs Parker said--that it wasn't used once

in a twelvemonth. I don't want to attract all the loafers in Tanslowe

into my house. Their custom's worth nothing, and I'd sooner be without

it. Time enough to put that room right if I find my staying visitors

want it, and people who've been on the river all day are mostly too

tired for a game after dinner."

Harry pointed out that it sometimes rained, and there was the winter to

think about. He had always got plenty to say, and what he said now had

sense in it. But I never go chopping and changing about, and I had made

my mind up. So I told him he had got to learn how to manage the house,

and not to waste half his time over the billiard-table. I had a good

deal done to the rest of the house in the way of redecorating and

improvements, but I never touched the annexe.

The next time I saw the room was the day after we moved in. I was

alone, and I thought it certainly did look a dingy hole as compared with

the rest of the house. Then my eye happened to fall on the board, and it

still showed sixty-six--forty-eight, as it had done when I entered the

room with Harry three months before. I altered the board myself this

time. To me it was only a funny coincidence; another game had been

played there and had stopped exactly at the same point. But I was glad

Harry was not with me, for it was the kind of thing that would have made

him jumpier than ever.

It was the summer time and we soon had something to do. I had been told

that motor-cars had cut into the river trade a good deal; so I laid

myself out for the motorist. Tanslowe was just a nice distance for a run

from town before lunch. It was all in the old-fashioned style, but there

was plenty of choice and the stuff was good; and my wine-list was worth

consideration. Prices were high, but people will pay when they are

pleased with the way they are treated. Motorists who had been once came

again and sent their friends. Saturday to Monday we had as much as ever

we could do, and more than I had ever meant to do. But I am built like

that--once I am in a shop I have got to run it for all it's worth.

I had been there about a month, and it was about the height of our

season, when one night, for no reason that I could make out, I couldn't

get to sleep. I had turned in, tired enough, at half-past ten, leaving

Harry to shut up and see the lights out, and at a quarter past twelve I

was still awake. I thought to myself that a pint of stout and a biscuit

might be the cure for that. So I lit my candle and went down to the bar.

The gas was out on the staircase and in the passages, and all was quiet.

The door into the bar was locked, but I had thought to bring my pass-key

with me. I had just drawn my tankard of stout when I heard a sound that

made me put the tankard down and listen again.

The billiard-room door was just outside in the passage, and there could

not be the least doubt that a game was going on. I could hear the

click-click of the balls as plainly as possible. It surprised me a

little, but it did not startle me. We had several staying in the house,

and I supposed two of them had fancied a game. All the time that I was

drinking the stout and munching my biscuit the game went on--click,

click-click, click. Everybody has heard the sound hundreds of times

standing outside the glass-pannelled door of a billiard-room and waiting

for the stroke before entering. No other sound is quite like it.

Suddenly the sound ceased. The game was over. I had nothing on but my

pyjamas and a pair of slippers, and I thought I would get upstairs again

before the players came out. I did not want to stand there shivering and

listening to complaints about the table. I locked the bar, and took a

glance at the billiard-room door as I was about to pass it. What I saw

made me stop short. The glass panels of the door were as black as my

Sunday hat, except where they reflected the light of my candle. The

room, then, was not lit up, and people do not play billiards in the

dark. After a second or two I tried the handle. The door was locked. It

was the only door to the room.

I said to myself: "I'll go on back to bed. It must have been my fancy,

and there was nobody playing billiards at all." I moved a step away, and

then I said to myself again: "I know perfectly well that a game _was_

being played. I'm only making excuses because I'm in a funk."

That settled it. Having driven myself to it, I moved pretty quickly. I

shoved in my pass-key, opened the door, and said "Anybody there?" in a

moderately loud voice that sounded somehow like another man's. I am very

much afraid that I should have jumped if there had come any answer to my

challenge, but all was silent. I took a look round. The cover was on the

table. An old screen was leaning against it; it had been put there to be

out of the way. As I moved my candle the shadows of things slithered

across the floor and crept up the walls. I noticed that the windows were

properly fastened, and then, as I held my candle high, the

marking-board seemed to jump out of the darkness. The score recorded

was sixty-six--forty-eight.

I shut the door, locked it again, and went up to my room. I did these

things slowly and deliberately, but I was frightened and I was puzzled.

One is not at one's best in the small hours.

The next morning I tackled Silas.

"Silas," I said, "what do you do when gentlemen ask for the

billiard-room?"

"Well, sir," said Silas, "I put them off if I can. Mr Harry directed me

to, the place being so much out of order."

"Quite so," I said. "And when you can't put them off?"

"Then they just try it, sir, and the table puts them off. It's very bad.

There's been no game played there since we came."

"Curious," I said. "I thought I heard a game going on last night."

"I've heard it myself, sir, several times. There being no light in the

room, I've put it down to a loose ventilator. The wind moves it and it

clicks."

"That'll be it," I said. Five minutes later I had made sure that there

was no loose ventilator in the billiard-room. Besides, the sound of one

ball striking another is not quite like any other sound. I also went up

to the board and turned the score back, which I had omitted to do the

night before. Just then Harry passed the door on his way from the bar,

with a cigarette in his mouth as usual. I called him in.

"Harry," I said, "give me thirty, and I'll play you a hundred up for a

sovereign. You can tell one of the girls to fetch our cues from

upstairs."

Harry took his cigarette out of his mouth and whistled. "What, uncle!"

he said. "Well, you're going it, I don't think. What would you have said

to me if I'd asked you for a game at ten in the morning?"

"Ah!" I said, "but this is all in the way of business. I can't see much

wrong with the table, and if I can play on it, then other people may.

There's a chance to make a sovereign for you anyhow. You've given me

forty-five and a beating before now."

"No, uncle," he said, "I wouldn't give you thirty. I wouldn't give you

one. The table's not playable. Luck would win against Roberts on it."

He showed me the faults of the thing and said he was busy. So I told him

if he liked to lose the chance of making a sovereign he could.

"I hate that room," he said, as we came out. "It's not too clean, and it

smells like a vault."

"It smells a lot better than your cigarettes," I said.

For the next six weeks we were all busy, and I gave little thought to

the billiard-room. Once or twice I heard old Silas telling a customer

that he could not recommend the table, and that the whole room was to

be redecorated and refitted as soon as we got the estimates. "You see,

sir, we've only been here a little while, and there hasn't been time to

get everything as we should like it quite yet."

One day Mrs Parker, the woman who had the Regency before me, came down

from town to see how we were getting on. I showed the old lady round,

pointed out my improvements, and gave her a bit of lunch in my office.

"Well, now," I said, as she sipped her glass of port afterwards, "I'm

not complaining of my bargain, but isn't the billiard-room a bit queer?"

"It surprises me," she said, "that you've left it as it is. Especially

with everything else going ahead, and the yard half full of motors. I

should have taken it all down myself if I'd stopped. That iron roof's

nothing but an eyesore, and you might have a couple of beds of geraniums

there and improve the look of your front."

"Let's see," I said. "What was the story about that billiard-room?"

"What story do you mean?" she said, looking at me suspiciously.

"The same one you're thinking of," I said.

"About that man, Josiah Ham?"

"That's it."

"Well, I shouldn't worry about that if I were you. That was all thirty

years ago, and I doubt if there's a soul in Tanslowe knows it now. Best

forgotten, I say. Talk of that kind doesn't do a hotel any good. Why,

how did you come to hear of it?"

"That's just it," I said. "The man who told me was none too clear. He

gave me a hint of it. He was an old commercial passing through, and had

known the place in the old days. Let's hear your story and see if it

agrees with his."

But I had told my fibs to no purpose. The old lady seemed a bit

flustered. "If you don't mind, Mr Sanderson, I'd rather not speak of

it."

I thought I knew what was troubling her. I filled her glass and my own.

"Look here," I said. "When you sold the place to me it was a fair deal.

You weren't called upon to go thirty years back, and no reasonable man

would expect it. I'm satisfied. Here I am, and here I mean to stop, and

twenty billiard-rooms wouldn't drive me away. I'm not complaining. But,

just as a matter of curiosity, I'd like to hear your story."

"What's your trouble with the room?"

"Nothing to signify. But there's a game played there and marked

there--and I can't find the players, and it's never finished. It stops

always at sixty-six--forty-eight."

She gave a glance over her shoulder. "Pull the place down," she said.

"You can afford to do it, and I couldn't." She finished her port. "I

must be going, Mr Sanderson. There's rain coming on, and I don't want to

sit in the train in my wet things. I thought I would just run down to

see how you were getting on, and I'm sure I'm glad to see the old place

looking up again."

I tried again to get the story out of her, but she ran away from it. She

had not got the time, and it was better not to speak of such things. I

did not worry her about it much, as she seemed upset over it.

I saw her across to the station, and just got back in time. The rain

came down in torrents. I stood there and watched it, and thought it

would do my garden a bit of good. I heard a step behind me and looked

round. A fat chap with a surly face stood there, as if he had just come

out of the coffee-room. He was the sort that might be a gentleman and

might not.

"Afternoon, sir," I said. "Nasty weather for motoring."

"It is," he said. "Not that I came in a motor. You the proprietor, Mr

Sanderson?"

"I am," I said. "Came here recently."

"I wonder if there's any chance of a game of billiards."

"I'm afraid not," I said. "Table's shocking. I'm having it all done up

afresh, and then--"

"What's it matter?" said he. "I don't care. It's something to do, and

one can't go out."

"Well," I said, "if that's the case, I'll give you a game, sir. But I'm

no flyer at it at the best of times, and I'm all out of practice now."

"I'm no good myself. No good at all. And I'd be glad of the game."

At the billiard-room door I told him I'd fetch a couple of decent cues.

He nodded and went in.

When I came back with my cue and Harry's, I found the gas lit and the

blinds drawn, and he was already knocking the balls about.

"You've been quick, sir," I said, and offered him Harry's cue. But he

refused and said he would keep the one he had taken from the rack. Harry

would have sworn if he had found that I had lent his cue to a stranger,

so I thought that was just as well. Still, it seemed to me that a man

who took a twisted cue by preference was not likely to be an expert.

The table was bad, but not so bad as Harry had made out. The luck was

all my side. I was fairly ashamed of the flukes I made, one after the

other. He said nothing, but gave a short, loud laugh once or twice--it

was a nasty-sounding laugh. I was at thirty-seven when he was nine, and

I put on eleven more at my next visit and thought I had left him

nothing.

Then the fat man woke up. He got out of his first difficulty, and after

that the balls ran right for him. He was a player, too, with plenty of

variety and resource, and I could see that I was going to take a

licking. When he had reached fifty-one, an unlucky kiss left him an

impossible position. But I miscued, and he got going again. He played

very, very carefully now, taking a lot more time for consideration than

he had done in his previous break. He seemed to have got excited over

it, and breathed hard, as fat men do when they are worked up. He had

kept his coat on, and his face shone with perspiration.

At sixty-six he was in trouble again; he walked round to see the exact

position, and chalked his cue. I watched him rather eagerly, for I did

not like the score. I hoped he would go on. His cue slid back to strike,

and then dropped with a clatter from his hand. The fat man was

gone--gone, as I looked at him, like a flame blown out, vanished into

nothing.

I staggered away from the table. I began to back slowly towards the

door, meaning to make a bolt for it. There was a click from the

scoring-board, and I saw the thing marked up. And then--I am thankful to

say--the billiard-room door opened, and I saw Harry standing there. He

was very white and shaky. Somehow, the fact that he was frightened

helped to steady me.

"Good heavens, uncle!" he gasped, "I've been standing outside. What's

the matter? What's happened?"

"Nothing's the matter," I said sharply. "What are you shivering about?"

I swished back the curtain, and sent up the blind with a snap. The rain

was over now, and the sun shone in through the wet glass--I was glad of

it.

"I thought I heard voices--laughing--somebody called the score."

I turned out the gas. "Well," I said, "this table's enough to make any

man laugh, when it don't make him swear. I've been trying your game of

one hand against another, and I daresay I called the score out loud.

It's no catch--not even for a wet afternoon. I'm not both-handed, like

the apes and Harry Bryden."

Harry is as good with the left hand as the right, and a bit proud of it.

I slid my own cue back into its case. Then, whistling a bit of a tune, I

picked up the stranger's cue, which I did not like to touch. I

nearly dropped it again when I saw the initials "J.H." on the butt.

"Been trying the cues," I said, as I put it in the rack. He looked at me

as if he were going to ask more questions. So I put him on to something

else. "We've not got enough cover for those motor-cars," I said. "Lucky

we hadn't got many here in this rain. There's plenty of room for another

shed, and it needn't cost much. Go and see what you can make of it. I'll

come out directly, but I've got to talk to that girl in the bar first."

He went off, looking rather ashamed of his tremors.

I had not really very much to say to Miss Hesketh in the bar. I put

three fingers of whisky in a glass and told her to put a dash of soda on

the top of it. That was all. It was a full-sized drink and did me good.

Then I found Harry in the yard. He was figuring with pencil on the back

of an envelope. He was always pretty smart where there was anything

practical to deal with. He had spotted where the shed was to go, and he

was finding what it would cost at a rough estimate.

"Well," I said, "if I went on with that idea of mine about the

flower-beds it needn't cost much beyond the labour."

"What idea?"

"You've got a head like a sieve. Why, carrying on the flower-beds round

the front where the billiard-room now stands. If we pulled that down it

would give us all the materials we want for the new motor-shed. The

roofing's sound enough, for I was up yesterday looking into it."

"Well, I don't think you mentioned it to me, but it's a rare good idea."

"I'll think about it," I said.

That evening my cook, Timbs, told me he'd be sorry to leave me, but he

was afraid he'd find the place too slow for him--not enough doing. Then

old Silas informed me that he hadn't meant to retire so early, but he

wasn't sure--the place was livelier than he had expected, and there

would be more work than he could get through. I asked no questions. I

knew the billiard-room was somehow or other at the bottom of it, and so

it turned out. In three days' time the workmen were in the house and

bricking up the billiard-room door; and after that Timbs and old Silas

found the Regency suited them very well after all. And it was not just

to oblige Harry, or Timbs, or Silas that I had the alteration made. That

unfinished game was in my mind; I had played it, and wanted never to

play it again. It was of no use for me to tell myself that it had all

been a delusion, for I knew better. My health was good, and I had no

delusions. I had played it with Josiah Ham--with the lost soul of Josiah

Ham--and that thought filled me not with fear, but with a feeling of

sickness and disgust.

It was two years later that I heard the story of Josiah Ham, and it was

not from old Mrs Parker. An old tramp came into the saloon bar begging,

and Miss Hesketh was giving him the rough side of her tongue.

"Nice treatment!" said the old chap. "Thirty years ago I worked here,

and made good money, and was respected, and now it's insults."

And then I struck in. "What did you do here?" I asked.

"Waited at table and marked at billiards."

"Till you took to drink?" I said.

"Till I resigned from a strange circumstance."

I sent him out of the bar, and took him down the garden, saying I'd find

him an hour or two's work. "Now, then," I said, as soon as I had got him

alone, "what made you leave?"

He looked at me curiously. "I expect you know, sir," he said.

"Sixty-six. Unfinished."

And then he told me of a game played in that old billiard-room on a wet

summer afternoon thirty years before. He, the marker, was one of the

players. The other man was a commercial traveller, who used the house

pretty regularly. "A fat man, ugly-looking, with a nasty laugh. Josiah

Ham his name was. He was at sixty-six when he got himself into a tight

place. He moved his ball--did it when he thought I wasn't looking. But I

saw it in the glass, and I told him of it. He got very angry. He said he

wished he might be struck dead if he ever touched the ball."

The old tramp stopped. "I see," I said.

"They said it was apoplexy. It's known to be dangerous for fat men to

get very angry. But I'd had enough of it before long. I cleared out, and

so did the rest of the servants."

"Well," I said, "we're not so superstitious nowadays. And what brought

you down in the world?"

"It would have driven any man to it," he said. "And once the habit is

formed--well, it's there."

"If you keep off it I can give you a job weeding for three days."

He did not want the work. He wanted a shilling, and he got it; and I saw

to it that he did not spend it in my house.

We have got a very nice billiard-room upstairs now. Two new tables and

everything ship-shape. You may find Harry there most evenings. It is all

right. But I have never taken to billiards again myself.

And where the old billiard-room was there are flower-beds. The pansies

that grow there have got funny markings--like figures.

SPARKLING BURGUNDY

In London a day in mid-August drew to its close. The air was motionless,

the pavements were hot. Weary children came home with the perambulator

from the sand-pit of Regent's Park or the playground of Kensington

Gardens. Young men from the city wore straw hats and thronged the

outside of motor-omnibuses. Oxford Street, that singularly striving

street, was still striving, still exhibiting some of its numerous

activities. Starting from a humble and Holborn origin, it lives to touch

the lips of Park Lane, but it goes to Bayswater when it dies. It was

still protesting that it was not tired and still crowded with traffic.

Irregular masses of buildings and heavy dusty trees stood out darkly

against a sky of fainting lettuce colour. Young Mrs Bablove noticed them

as she came out of the Tube station, drawing her cloak round her

unwonted evening-dress. "Yes," said her husband, as she called his

attention to the effect. "Striking." It was scarcely a minute's walk

from the station to the Restaurant Merveilleux, where they were to be

the guests of Mr Albert Carver.

The Restaurant Merveilleux does its best. It has an arc-lamp and a

medium-sized commissionaire. It bears its name proudly in gilt letters a

foot and a half high. In the entrance are bay trees in green tubs and a

framed bill of our celebrated _diner du jour_ at half-a-crown. Within

are little tables brightly appointed and many electric lights. A

mahogany screen is carved with challenging pine-apples and grapes, and

against it is a table for six. Mr Carver had reserved this table. Yet

somehow one gets the correct impression that this is a small

eating-house under Italian proprietorship.

The occasion of the little dinner given by this bachelor and _viveur_

was the engagement of Ada Bunting to Harold Simcox. Albert Carver had

received much hospitality from Miss Bunting's parents. He had as nearly

as possible got engaged to Miss Bunting himself, and now knew what the

condemned man feels like who is unexpectedly reprieved. Miss Bunting and

Mr Simcox were the guests of importance. She was lymphatic and

pale-haired; her future husband was smaller and a shade shorter than

she. He concentrated on politeness, and made anyone to whom he spoke

feel like a possible customer. As for Mr and Mrs Bablove, Mr Albert

Carver had always intended to ask them, if he ever asked anybody. He

frankly admired young Mrs Bablove, and said so, and was slightly pleased

when this created surprise and it was suggested that she was hardly his

type. It seemed to imply that Mr Carver was a problem, and this was

subtly flattering to Mr Carver--who, if a problem, was singularly

soluble. It is true none the less that the women whom Albert Carver

admired were mostly fleshy and exuberant. Mrs Bablove looked like an

angel who had gone into domestic service--a soul in servitude. She had

to make a just-sufficient income suffice, and as she was devoted to her

husband and her two little boys she did a good deal of work herself. She

had a sweet and rather childish nature, was not without some true

aesthetic perception, and under less stringent limitations might have

developed further. Mr Bablove, a very quiet and prosaic man, who wore

spectacles only when he was reading, made about the same income as Mr

Carver. They both held responsible positions in the same firm. They both

lived in the same street in the Shepherd's Bush neighbourhood. But Mr

Bablove's income had to provide for a household, and Mr Albert Carver's

income was all ear-marked for Mr Albert Carver. There was less splendour

in Mr Bablove's house than in Mr Carver's wicked flat with the hookah

(from the cut-price tobacconist) standing on the low inlaid table and

the French photogravure of a bathing subject over the mantelpiece.

The remaining guest was Miss Adela Holmes. She was beautiful and looked

Oriental. Her movements (after office-hours) were slow and very

graceful. Her voice was soft and languorous; her eyes also spoke. During

the day she was the third quickest typist in London, and ran her own

office strictly on business lines. Mr Carver in his light way would

sometimes call her "Nirvana"; he was convinced that this was an Eastern

term of endearment, and, though an allusion to her appearance,

permissible in a platonic friend who had known her for years.

Mr Carver surveyed his little party with pleasure. It was not the

celebrated half-crown dinner that was being served for this Lucullus; it

was the rich man's alternative--the _diner de luxe_ at four-and-six. Mr

Carver always said that if he did a thing at all he liked to do it well.

He was a man of middle stature and middle age. His hair was very black

and intensely smooth. His face suggested a commercial Napoleon. He was

dressed with some elaboration; pink coral buttons constrained his white

waistcoat over a slight protuberance. Other diners at other tables were

not so dressed--not dressed for the evening at all. One blackguard had

entered in a suit of flannels and a straw hat. But other tables had not

the profusion of smilax and carnations which graced the table reserved

for Mr Carver's party. A paper simulation of chrysanthemums was good

enough for the half-crowners. How could they expect the eager attendance

given to Mr Carver's party? The frock-coated proprietor hovered near the

mahogany screen. The head-waiter, at a side-table, took the neck of a

bottle of sparkling burgundy between his dusky hands and caused it to

rotate vigorously in the ice-pail. This does not really make that

curious wine any the worse. Another waiter handed up for Mr Carver's

approval the _chef's_ attempt to make a lobster look like a sunset on

the Matterhorn.

"Looks almost too good to eat," said Adela Holmes, drowsily.

Mr Carver laughed joyously. "Think so, Nirvana? Well, we'll try it."

The wonder had not yet quite gone out of the soft brown eyes of Dora

Bablove. This was luxury indeed. It was a new way of living that she had

never known; in the course of her married life she had dined out very

rarely, and never after this manner. Somehow she felt as if she was not

Dora Bablove at all.

The proprietor made a suggestion to Mr Carver. "Good idea, signor," said

Mr Carver. "You'd like an electric fan, Mrs Bablove, wouldn't you?"

It was done in a moment. An electric lamp was taken out, and something

plugged in its place. A gentle whirr, with a hint of an aeroplane in it.

A cool breeze that fluttered the pendent smilax.

"I think you're being very well looked after," said Mrs Bablove,

timidly.

"You've got it," said Mr Carver, with conviction. "That's just the

advantage of a little place like this. I'm here pretty often, and the

signor knows me; and--oh, well, I daresay he thinks it worth his while

to keep my custom. I assure you I get an amount of personal attention

here that I never get at the Ritz." As Mr Carver had never been to the

Ritz this is credible.

"I like being looked after," said Mrs Bablove. "I like to think that so

many people are taking so much trouble to please me."

"I should think--er--that that must always happen," said the polite Mr

Simcox on her other side.

"Not a bit," laughed Dora. "As a rule, I take all the trouble. Ask Teddy

if I don't."

But nobody asked Teddy. Mr Bablove was discussing palmistry with Miss

Bunting, who thought there might be something in it, and with Miss

Holmes, who was quite expert and offered to read his hand.

Mr Carver said, in his whimsical way, that he thought Mrs Bablove should

drink and forget it. He watched her as she touched with her full lips

the magenta foam in her glass. He had never seen Mrs Bablove in a low

dress before; certainly she had a charm. The conversation grew animated.

The question of London in August was settled. London empty? Not a bit of

it. That was the old idea. Why, this year, with the House sitting, half

the best people were still in London. You could walk through Mayfair and

see for yourself.

Mrs Bablove was not deeply interested in the question. She knew that

Teddy and Mr Carter would take their holidays just when the firm

decided. She was more interested in the people in the room. The

blackguard in the flannel suit had finished his lager and had attempted

to light a pipe; it had been politely explained to him that pipes were

not permissible. At a little table in the corner were a man with a

saturnine face and a very young girl in red. They drank champagne,

talked low and confidentially, and paid no attention to anybody. Dora

Bablove had strayed into a world previously unexplored by her.

More and more the conviction came on her that the Dora who was

unwrapping the vine-leaf from the fat quail on her plate was not the

Dora who had been married six years, who looked after her two little

boys so well, who mended, and cleaned, and did rather clever things with

the rest of the cold mutton. She was for the moment a woman untrammelled

by circumstances. She delighted in it, enjoyed it desperately, and was

half afraid of it. Had this Dora quite the same ideas about--well, about

what was right?

The girl in red had lit a cigarette now, and she was getting rather

angry with the man who was with her. Dora thought he was making her

angry on purpose. She wondered why. She asked Mr Carver.

Mr Carver shook his head. A mistake to make the ladies angry--that was

what he always thought. But some of them had tempers. Now--well, he

mustn't say that.

"Oh, go on, you must," said Dora.

"Well, I was only going to say that appearances are deceptive. You look

at first sight as if you had the most placid nature in the world. But I

think you could get angry, Mrs Bablove--very angry."

"Oh, no. Quite wrong. Whatever makes you think that?"

"There's a look in the eyes sometimes. Oh, I assure you it makes me very

careful," laughed Mr Carver. "Frightens me. Now, really, Mrs Bablove,

you must have a little yellow Chartreuse with your coffee."

But Mrs Bablove was resolute in her refusal. She did not care in the

least about such things. She had drunk one glass of the sparkling

burgundy, not to be out of the picture, and after that had sipped iced

water. At the other end of the table "Nirvana" was saying that she

didn't see why she shouldn't--two other women in the room had set the

example. And with that she accepted a cigarette from Mr Bablove's silver

case. The smoke wandered gently through the smilax plantation, and left

hurriedly when it met the electric fan.

And now Mr Simcox had to take Miss Bunting home, for Miss Bunting lived

in remote Wimbledon and in an early household, and the privilege of the

latch-key was not accorded to her. Mr Simcox, who had not refused the

yellow Chartreuse or anything else, was slightly flushed and more polite

than ever. He assured his host that it had been the pleasantest evening

of his life and he should never forget it. Even the lymphatic Miss

Bunting had become quite animated. At the beginning of the dinner they

had maintained towards one another a pre-concerted air of dignified

reserve, but that was now quite broken down.

Mr Carver rose to see them to their cab. "And if anybody else tries to

go," he said to the rest of his guests, "I shall lose my temper."

"Might have got a box at one of the halls if I'd thought about it," said

Mr Carver on his return. It was a well-meant effort of the imagination.

He might, but it would have been unlike him.

"Much pleasanter where we are," said Miss Holmes, languorously.

"Performances always bore me."

"Ah, well, Nirvana," said Mr Carver, "so long as you're pleased--"

Miss Holmes turned again to Mr Bablove. His wife hoped that Teddy was

not being too prosaic. From a word or two she caught she knew he was

talking politics. But Miss Holmes did not look bored. Perhaps she was

interested in politics too.

"Why do you call her Nirvana?" Mrs Bablove asked, dropping her voice a

little. But the couple at the further end of the table were absorbed in

their talk now and taking no notice of what the others were saying.

"Why do I call her Nirvana? Because she looks like a gipsy. She does,

doesn't she?"

Mr Carver's fruity voice had also become discreet.

"I don't know. I think she looks charming."

"Do you?" said Mr Carver. "I'd like to talk to you about that. Not

now--presently." He knew the value of a slight hint of mystery. "Have a

cigarette now, Mrs Bablove?"

"Thanks. I think I will."

"Why wouldn't you smoke before?" he asked as he lit the cigarette for

her.

"Too many people. The room's nearly empty now. I'm not so brave

as--Nirvana."

"I don't think you quite know what you are. You're full of

possibilities."

"I like these cigarettes," said Dora. "Teddy gives me one sometimes,

though I don't often smoke, but his are not quite so nice as these."

Mr Carver became informative on the subject of Turkish tobacco, but with

the information he wove much which was personal. It appeared that it was

Mr Carver's ambition to leave business and London and to spend the rest

of his life in Japan.

"I thought you were devoted to London," said Mrs Bablove. "What you say

rather surprises me."

"I surprise myself sometimes," said Mr Carver, darkly.

A little later all rose to go.

A hansom was waiting just outside, and Mr Carver began to organise

briskly.

"Will you take Miss Holmes in that cab, Teddy? It's scarcely two

minutes out of your way. I'll bring Mrs Bablove in the next cab."

Mr Carver took it all for granted, and it was done as he suggested. The

next cab was a taxi.

"We shall be home before them," laughed Dora as she got into the cab.

"By the way, Mr Carver, what were you going to tell me about Nirvana?"

And presently Mr Carver was saying why Miss Holmes could not seem

charming when Dora Bablove was present. He compared them in some detail.

"I don't think you know enough about yourself," he said. "That delicious

mouth of yours!"

* * * * *

When they reached Mrs Bablove's house Dora did not ask Mr Carver to come

in. She thanked him and said good-night rather briefly. She switched on

the light in the hall, ran upstairs to see that her two little boys were

safely asleep, and came down to the dining-room to wait for her husband.

She poured out a glass of water and drank it. Then she sat quite still

in the easy-chair with her head in her hands. What was she to do? What

on earth was she to do? A man had kissed her on the lips--a man who was

not her husband. She had let him do it. She thought--she hardly

knew--that her lips had answered to his. Such a thing had never happened

to her before. She was wide awake now. But surely in the cab she must

have been half asleep.

She had leaned back with her eyes half-closed, suffused with a pleasant

warmth and tiredness, and had heard his caressing voice praising her as

she had never before been praised. She had not guessed that he thought

so much of her--that he admired her so much. Then as he spoke of the

beauty of her hands, he took one of her hands in his. She knew what

would come, and was without any power to prevent it. She had seen his

face come near to her own and--no, she would tell the truth to herself.

For a moment she had gone mad and let herself go completely. She had

wanted to be kissed, and as she felt his lips upon her own her kiss had

met his.

True, the next moment she had recovered herself; she chatted gaily, was

merely amused when Mr Carver would have been sentimental, and would not

let him get near her. Her one reference to what had happened was as the

cab neared her own door. She said, "You know what you did when I had

fallen asleep. Never try to do it again. And never speak of it to me. I

couldn't forgive it twice, you know. To-night I've--I made some

allowance for--well, here we are. I must get out."

She was not troubled about Mr Carver. She had told him that she was

asleep, and had implied that he was under the influence of wine. She

felt that she could always manage Mr Carver.

But what about Teddy? He must never, never know. It was one little

slip, one moment of madness, and it would never happen again. It would

be wicked to let Teddy know and to make him wretched.

On the other hand, if she did not tell him, how was she to quiet the

voice of conscience? What became of their mutual confidence? She felt

that she could never be happy again until she had told all and been

forgiven.

She took the thing tragically. She saw the whole of her own happiness

and Teddy's happiness ruined by that one moment of madness and the

future of the little boys seriously imperilled. She was just wondering

who, in the event of a separation, would have the custody of the

children, when she heard the sound of Teddy's hansom as it stopped at

the door.

What on earth was she to do? She could never face him. She would just

burst into tears and tell him everything.

But she found herself quite unable to carry out this decision. Teddy

looked so cheerful. He talked more than usual. How had she liked it? A

rare good dinner, it seemed to him. And she had been by far the

prettiest woman there. He had felt proud of her.

She smiled sadly, and said that he was prejudiced. "And how did you get

on with Miss Holmes?"

"Oh, all right. The trouble with her is that she's rather affected, and

affectation is just one of those things that I can't stand."

If only for one moment he would take his eyes off her. She felt

distraught. She hardly knew what she was saying. She observed that

sparkling Burgundy seemed rather a heady wine. He hastened to agree with

her.

"I didn't take much of it. To tell the truth, it's not a wine I ever met

before, and the taste seemed to me rather funny. I'd sooner have a

whisky-and-soda any day."

"Have one now. Do. Why not? I'll run up to bed because I'm so tired. I

daresay I shall be asleep by the time you come."

"Oh, I shan't be long," said Teddy, and Dora managed to get out of the

room without being kissed.

The moment she had gone Teddy's cheerfulness vanished. He mixed himself

a very stiff whisky-and-soda, and sipped gloomily, staring at the dead

cigarette between his fingers.

Dora panted as she undressed. Tragedy seemed to be choking her. She

hurried into bed. When Teddy came up she pretended to be asleep, but she

got little sleep that night.

* * * * *

Two days had passed and Dora had not spoken. There were dark lines under

her eyes, and she seldom smiled. Teddy, always kind, had been kinder to

her than ever. He said complimentary things to her. Every evening he

brought her fruit from the city, because she liked fruit; it was

expensive fruit too. And every kind word or act seemed to cut her heart

like a knife. She felt so unworthy of devotion. The position was

unendurable, and on the third morning as they rose from breakfast she

suddenly determined to end it there and then--to tell him everything and

throw herself on his mercy.

"I want to speak to you for a minute before you go to the city," she

said. "Will you come into the drawing-room?"

"Very well," said Teddy.

In the drawing-room she found that she was shaking all over and had to

sit down. She was thinking how she would begin, when she heard a hollow

voice say, "Wait. You need say nothing." It was Teddy's voice.

"What do you mean?" she asked in a choked whisper.

"Do you think I haven't seen?" said Teddy, almost fiercely. "You guessed

it somehow when I came into the house that night. I suppose a bad

conscience gives itself away. I thought you knew when you asked me how I

got on with Miss Holmes. These last two days you've been upset. You've

not been yourself. And that of course made me certain you knew. Only let

me tell you how I came to do it."

"Yes," said Dora, with great self-possession, "tell me that."

"Well, she was talking about the loneliness of her life. It was as much

pity as anything. And the cab was going down a dark street at the time.

Mind, I only kissed her once. And the moment I did it I--I was ashamed

of myself. You don't know what I've been through."

Dora thought she did, but she said nothing.

"I swear that I care for no woman in the world but you, Dora. I'm

awfully sorry I've hurt you like this. Can you ever forgive me?"

Dora rose, and placed both hands on his shoulders. "Could you have

forgiven me," she said, "if I had let a man kiss me?"

He paused a moment. "Yes, Dora," he said, "I think so."

Her face was like the face of an angel. "Then, Teddy dear, I forgive you

absolutely. We will never speak of this again. And it will never happen

again, will it?"

"Never," said the repentant sinner, and kissed her.

Mrs Bablove sang happily as she helped to make the beds that morning.

And they never did speak of it again. Once, two years later--this was

after poor Aunt Mary had been called to her rest and the Babloves had

become prosperous in consequence--Teddy gave it as his opinion that

there was only one sparkling wine worth consideration and that wine was

champagne. Dora cordially agreed with him, but changed the subject

rapidly.

THE ACT OF HEROISM

I

Do not go outside your part, for whatever part in life you may be cast.

If you are Nature's low comedian, do not usurp the business of the hero.

Hear the plain story of Alfred Smithers, who stood five foot eight, had

sandy hair and an apologetic eye, earned four pounds a week by

book-keeping, and was a good husband until by the merest chance he was

led into the paths of heroism.

Chance plays the devil at times. Emily Trimmins, housemaid by profession

and hysterical by nature, found that the postman was walking out with

another lady. Consulting her recollection of penny romances she saw that

suicide was clearly indicated. The relics of sense which distinguish

hysteria from madness made her choose the manner of her suicide. She

went up on to the Heath one afternoon and flung herself into a pond, in

the presence of several philosophical male loafers, one emotional

nursemaid, and two fat-headed children. Her last thought as she entered

the water was which of the male loafers would pull her out again.

The first loafer said that was as silly an act as ever he saw, and he

should be moving home. The second loafer observed that something ought

to be done at once. The third called for help. The fourth said the

police were never there when they were wanted.

The emotional nursemaid sat down at once on the grass, removed her hat,

unhooked her dress at the neck, fanned herself with a handkerchief, and

said, "Oh! that _has_ give me a turn!"

The two fat-headed children cried, "Ain't that funny? Nurse, make her

come out and do it again. Nurse, ain't that funny? Nurse, make her come

out and do it again." _Da capo._

And at this moment chance--playing the devil as aforesaid--brought upon

the scene Alfred Smithers, who had fished the pond and believed the

depth nowhere exceeded three feet, who saw a policeman with a coil of

rope under his arm rapidly approaching, who observed that he had an

audience and was accordingly inspirited.

"Go in from where you are!" shouted the second loafer. "Don't waste time

thinking abart it." Smithers removed his silk hat and frock-coat.

"That's couridge! That's a man!" screamed the emotional nursemaid.

That settled it. With a stentorian cry of "Stand back, there!" to the

two fat-headed children--a cry which was not needed, but inserted by way

of trimming--Smithers jumped feet foremost. There was a mighty splash.

When it subsided, Smithers was observed standing in the pond, the water

reaching up to the terminals of his string-mended braces.

The two children rolled over and over on the grass in fits of

inextinguishable laughter. It was a good afternoon; they had had nothing

quite so good since the pantomime.

"Don't wait for her to come up," roared the second loafer. "Dive. That's

what you've got to do."

"I know what to do all right," replied Smithers, who, as a matter of

fact, didn't. He took one step forward, and incontinently vanished down

a fifteen-foot hole, of the existence of which, though he had fished

that pond, he had previously been unaware.

As he was going down the hole he met Emily Trimmins coming up. She

paused and soldered herself firmly on to as much of Smithers as she

could reach. He trod water very fast and very furiously, like a child

stamping its feet on the nursery floor because it mayn't begin tea cake

first. He lashed out hard and indiscriminately with both hands, and

might have succeeded in scraping off most of the half-drowned lady, but

that he found in his struggles they had both become entangled and tied

together by a rope. He could remember no prayer but the grace after

meat, which he repeated to himself fervently. Then he gave up. His

breath exploded into the green jelly. He gave one more kick, and lost

his interest in things.

In the meantime the policeman, assisted by the loafers, was pulling hard

at the other end of the rope, and brought to bank a job lot of mixed

scarecrows. Those being sorted out on the grass proved to be one moiety

Smithers and one moiety Trimmins. The treatment of the apparently

drowned was then proceeded with energetically, to the great satisfaction

of a considerable number of spectators. They had gathered in a moment.

Smithers came to himself, feeling ill but magnificent, and assured the

policeman that he was all right. He was not much to look at at the

moment, yet everywhere he felt the admiring gaze upon him. "Bravo!"

exclaimed an old gentleman. A very chorus of bravos followed, in which

the policeman and the doctor, who was busy with Emily Trimmins, joined

enthusiastically. Oh, it was good. It was very joyous.

"You done splendid, sir," said the policeman; "the way you just managed

to grab the end of the rope as you went down the hole to fetch her up

was very smart. You must be pretty quick and neat with your hands, and

pretty cool and collected too, for I daresay she give a lot of trouble

when you got 'er."

"Well, you see," said Smithers, indulgently, "she'd quite lost her

head."

"And yet you managed to get the rope under her armpits, tied a good

knot, and wound the slack twice round yourself! And it couldn't have

been done quicker if you had been on dry land, instead of under water

and 'ampered by the woman."

Emily Trimmins was by this time so far recovered as to be ripe for

removal in a four-wheeler, with a policeman on the box. She did not look

pretty. Her hair had come down, and something had happened to her nose.

It was suggested that she had struck it in entering the water. Alfred

Smithers remembered at an early stage of the struggle he had kicked

something; it was not worth mentioning. He took, under advice, another

drop of the brandy, and was driven home. The crowd cheered.

Mrs Smithers was a woman of some energy. Smithers was wrapped in hot

blankets and tucked away in bed in no time. He had a hot-water bottle at

his feet, and steaming rum-and-water at his head. Mrs Smithers sent a

polite note to Messrs Garson & Begg to say why her husband would be

unable to be at work as usual on the following day. She threw the story

over the right-hand wall of the back-yard to Mrs Warboys, and over the

left-hand wall to the widow of the late Charles Push. In twenty minutes

the story was all over the terrace and had not shrunk. There was great

excitement, and three separate houses hoped that Mrs Smithers would look

in for a cup of tea, and would be glad if they could do anything to

help. She accepted two of the invitations, and would visit the third

house on the morrow, and would be obliged by the loan of a nutmeg, it

being necessary to keep up an internal glow after prolonged struggle in

cold water--the dare-devil had dived six times before he found the

woman--and the patient otherwise being likely to take a chill in the

vitals and die hurriedly. Then she decided to have the newspaper

cuttings framed. The medal would go on the mantelpiece, under glass.

Smithers lay upstairs, with the feeling that his head was a large lump

of dough traversed by a steam-propelled roller, but satisfied that

heroism and hot rum were both excellent. He was soon asleep.

Glory reached its flood on the following day. An offering was brought

from the mother of Emily Trimmins--a box encrusted without with small

shells and two pieces of looking-glass and lined with pink satin within.

The slip of paper which accompanied it was inscribed--"A mother's

tribute to her daughter's presserver" (_sic_). The newspapers on the

whole did well, though the _Times_ was quite outclassed in the race for

news, having but two lines to the half column of the local organ. The

magistrate cautioned Miss Trimmins with some severity, and handed her

over to the care of her mother. He said that the loafers were not men.

He referred to the intrepid courage, cool head, strength wedded with

skill, of Alfred Smithers--one of the men of whom England had good cause

to be proud.

In the course of a week the postman had explained away the other lady

and was _au mieux_ with Emily Trimmins, who, so far as this story is

concerned, may now take a seat at the back.

A considerable number of Smithers' friends were waiting, when the

magistrate had finished, to have the pleasure of shaking hands with

Smithers, and congratulating him, and so on.

And that night one of the men of whom England had good cause to be proud

went home most painfully and uncompromisingly drunk.

II

Alfred Smithers, as he made his modest breakfast of a cup of tea and two

liver pills next morning, explained to his wife that it had not been the

drink so much as the reaction.

She said that he needn't have taken the reaction. She should overlook it

this time and say no more, knowing what he was when not misled. But no

amount of ironing would make that hat look anything again. He went to

work feeling that the glory had been turned a little lower.

There were more newspaper cuttings, and later there was something on

vellum. Smithers said rather bitterly that the Society seemed to do

things on the cheap. A medal came at last, presented by the vicar on

behalf of a few friends and local inhabitants. It was of silver and very

large. It was kept on the mantelpiece and shown to everybody who would

look at it.

But the excitement was dying down. Glory was on the ebb. Mrs Smithers

would sometimes allow two days to pass without alluding to the act

of heroism. Smithers watched the ebbing of the tide with inward

rage and with many vain efforts to stay it. The neighbourhood sickened

slowly of conversations on the different ways of rescuing the

drowning--conversations initiated by Smithers in order to lead to the

case of the poor girl, Emily Trimmins. But he had eaten praise-poison,

and no other diet was rich enough for him now. The neighbourhood

wearying of him and hinting as much, he would slip the medal into his

pocket on Saturday afternoons, get on his bicycle, and seek fresh

fields. A little group and a bar-parlour sufficed. Whatever the group

was discussing when Smithers first leaned his bicycle against the

horse-trough outside, five minutes later they were listening while

Smithers got in with "I remember once being on the Heath when some fool

of a girl jumped into twenty feet of water. What did I do? Watched for

the bubbles coming up and then dived. The devil of it was that there was

a strong cross-current and--" etc. Later, the medal would be produced.

Poor Alfred Smithers! Nature's low comedian, and yet smitten with a

raging madness for the strut, the soliloquy, the limelight, the

sympathetic music, the roar of applause!

In his new part of hero he invented business that was not good. He began

to be, as he phrased it, "master in his own house." He interfered in

matters which were the special province of Mrs Smithers. He gave

detailed instructions in domestic subjects of which he was completely

ignorant, and brought upon himself ridicule. He was rude to Mrs

Smithers, and said that she needed to be driven with a firm hand. He

told the eight-pound general that his word was law, and she forthwith

gave notice on the ground that she could put up with anything except

haughtiness.

Mrs Smithers told him with some frankness that she was glad to see his

back when he went to business of a morning, for he was more nuisance in

a house than a cartload of monkeys.

At business he had got, as a rule, just enough sense not to try any

heroism. He was a good book-keeper and he had got a good place and he

knew it. One day, however, as his mind strayed for a moment to high

things, he made a small blunder affecting a large sum, and the sum got

on to the wrong side of the book and caused trouble. In due course Mr

Peter Begg said, "Send me Smithers." The clerk who took the message said

to Smithers, "You're going to get beans." And at this all the heroism in

Smithers arose and boiled over, and he spluttered out that he thought

it would be rather the other way.

"Look here," said Mr Begg, "how do you come to make such an infernal

fool of yourself as this, Smithers?" Smithers was now well alight.

"Kindly understand once for all that there are some expressions I don't

permit to be used to me by any man."

Mr Begg gazed at Smithers pensively through his eye-glass and sighed.

"Get out," he said, "I'll finish with you to-morrow morning. You may be

sober by then. Get out, go on!"

Smithers got out, and a slight chill fell on him. Possibly he had gone

too far. He was unusually civil to his wife at supper that night, and

appeared somewhat preoccupied. After supper he asked his wife what she

thought of Klondike.

"I wouldn't care to have much to do with it. Why?"

"Well, I had a few words with Begg to-day--Peter Begg, the old one. I

was in the right, as it happened, but something I said seemed to sting

him rather. I can't say how it will end. I've as good as promised to see

him again to-morrow morning, but he may not meet my views. And you know

how it is when either the senior partner's got to go or the

book-keeper."

"You apologise and ask to be took on again," said Mrs Smithers, going

right through the elegancies of her husband's version and getting

straight down to the bedrock facts. "That's what you'll do if you're not

silly. You don't want to lose a good place."

"I don't know," said Smithers, with an air of melancholy, "same old

drudgery day after day, and what's it all to come to? Nothing. I might

strike it if we went to Klondike."

"You aren't going to no Klondike," said Mrs Smithers.

"I'm not sure it wouldn't be the right life for me. I'm naturally a man

of action. I do the book-keeping well enough, but adventures and

emergencies are more my line. You remember what the magistrate said

when--"

"I remember how drunk you were that night."

"Little you know!" said Smithers, though conscious that the retort was

somewhat vague. After some meditation he managed to supplement it as

follows: "And little you care either--top button's been off my wescut

for the last four days."

"You've got a tongue in your head to ask with, haven't you? Give it here

and don't grumble."

And a little later Alfred Smithers, with a distinct chill on the

heroism, went up to bed.

The chill was even more distinct when in the small hours of the morning

Mrs Smithers shook him by the shoulder, awoke him, told him that there

was a burglar in the kitchen, and asked him to go down.

In the small hours of the morning one's vitality is low.

III

They had been unable to get any satisfactory sleep after the

disturbance, and they breakfasted early. Mrs Smithers looked amused;

Alfred Smithers looked conciliatory.

"I want you to understand how it was," he said pleadingly.

"I understand it all right. And how my poor sides do ache with laughing.

'Lock our door as quietly as you can,' you says, 'and don't make a

sound,' you says, 'for,' you says, 'if he knows we've discovered him

he'll have the lives of both of us.' Sounds funnier still when it's said

over again by daylight. Oh, my poor sides!"

And even then Alfred Smithers did not become rebellious; on the

contrary, in a mirthless and subservient way he smiled.

"I'm quite willing to own I blundered in what seems now rather a funny

way. But it wasn't in the way you think, my dear. My dear Agnes, it

really wasn't."

"Tell your own story," said Mrs Smithers, with a victor's easiness.

"I was awoke sudden," said Smithers. "I don't suppose I was more than

half awake, which accounts for the error of judgment. I'm a man, and not

a machine. We all blunder at times. I own I made a mistake, and I can

afford to laugh at it." He managed to jerk up another semblance of a

smile. "At first I said that what you'd heard was a rat, and what you'd

seen was a shadow. Then when you made me look through the corner of the

blind, and I saw the end of the man's leg drawn inwardly through the

downstairs window, I, being half asleep, supposed that it was a regular

professional burglar. And if it had been that, my advice would have been

correct. Professional burglars carry revolvers in their 'ip-pockets, and

they'll shoot anybody--policeman or any man--to destroy evidence against

them. Very well. What good was I unarmed against an armed burglar?

Foolhardiness isn't courage. If you knew life as I know it you'd realise

that. You didn't agree with my ideas, and, as I was half asleep, I own

you were right; you said--"

Mrs Smithers took up the story triumphantly.

"I said it was stuff and nonsense, and so it was. Burglars don't come to

a penny-farthing place like this; and if they did, they wouldn't wake up

the house opening a window. Two drops of ile, a shove with the knife,

and a wad o' paper to deaden the sound of the spring when it comes

back."

Smithers recovered himself sufficiently to ask how they put in the two

drops of oil and the wad of paper.

"How should I know, not being a burglar myself? Anyhow, I was right. I

said it was just some tramp new to the business, and hungry for a

supper, and that he'd bolt as soon as he heard anybody moving. And

didn't he?"

"Yes," said Smithers, "he did. I was just thinking of getting out of bed

and following you down the stairs. But he bolted as soon as he heard our

door open, and was out of the house before you were half-way down.

That's my point. It was an error of judgment on my part, not a want of

courage. It's a mercy he'd no time to take much."

"Well, 'e'd got the cold beef out, and precious little he'd have left of

it. The bottle of beer he knocked over and broke in his hurry. The only

thing he actually got away with was that--er--that medal."

At this point Mrs Smithers' face became dark and inscrutable.

"That's a sad pity," she added; "we shall miss it too, with that

inscription, 'For Gallantry and Courage; Presented by a Few Admirers of

Alfred Smithers.' But you'll inquire of the police, of course, and as

likely as not you'll get it back. I believe I was right in saying you

ought to have gone to the police there and then."

"I believe you were," said Alfred, with alacrity. "It's no good going

now, for the medal's certain to be in the melting-pot. Besides, I've no

fancy for having the police in, interfering with my private business.

And I think it would be just as well if we neither of us said a word

about it."

"Oh, I must tell Mrs Warboys," said Mrs Smithers. "I wouldn't miss

seeing her laugh over that story were it ever so. As for pore Mrs Push,

when I come to the part when I put your boots on my feet because yours

squeaked louder, and you'd got your head under the bed-clothes, and I

said--"

"Oh, look here," said Alfred, desperately, "I do wish you wouldn't. I'd

really much rather not. It isn't often I ask for anything particular,

but if that story's told it's almost certain to be taken up in the wrong

way as far as it concerns me. I've made a blunder and I've lost my

medal. Ain't that enough for you?"

"Then you've given up that Klondike idea," observed Mrs Smithers, with

more consecutiveness than was immediately apparent.

"Certainly; oh, certainly! It was just a wandering notion that wouldn't

stand thinking over. And I shall smooth old Peter Begg down all right.

There will be a little give-and-take compromise on both sides. It only

wants tactful handling. Garson & Begg have been very good friends to me,

and I'm not going to throw them over. I couldn't do it, even if you

asked it."

"I don't ask it," said Mrs Smithers, drily. "Get that fixed right by

to-night and I won't say nothing."

On his way to the City he reflected that it would indeed require tact.

However, he entered Mr Begg's room and did his best.

"I've come," he said, "to apologise, sir, very humbly for the way I

spoke yesterday. As you saw, I wasn't myself, sir."

"Then you _were_ drunk?" said Mr Begg with mild interest.

"Oh, no, sir. At least it was more drugged. I'd suffered torments all

day with toothache, and took a little laudanum for it, and that made me

come over all anyhow. If I'd been myself I'd sooner have cut off my

right hand--"

"That'll do," said Mr Begg. "No more need be said about it in that case.

But when you are troubled with toothache again I should advise you

either to take a little less laudanum _or to take a good deal more_. Now

get on with your work."

Thus tact triumphed.

Mrs Smithers kept her word, and Mrs Warboys and the relict of the late

Charles Push have missed a story which would undoubtedly have amused

them. Smithers has returned to his natural _role_. The newspaper

cuttings have been replaced by a chromo which happened to fit the frame

exactly, and the happiness is general.

SOME NOTES ON CYRUS VERD

The name of Cyrus Verd, once so frequently seen in the newspapers and

heard in conversation, has now for many years past been rarely

mentioned. The absolute retirement of the latter part of his life helped

the public--always ready to forget--to forget him. A few weeks ago at

the club I happened to say something or other about him, and a man who,

as a rule, knows his world turned to me and asked who Cyrus Verd was.

The obituary notice of him in the _Times_ the other day may possibly

have revived interest in what was really rather an extraordinary

personality. But the notice was brief, and beyond names and dates said

little more than that he was "an eccentric millionaire, who, at the age

of forty-five, chose to surrender almost the whole of his wealth and

live a life of comparative poverty. It is said that this step was the

result of some curious religious convictions, but Cyrus Verd himself

never in his lifetime offered any explanation of it."

The few notes which I propose to add, including as they do a personal

reminiscence of the man, may possibly be of interest. A writer of

fiction constantly arranges his problem to suit his solution of it; it

is perhaps beneficial, though somewhat humiliating, that he should

occasionally turn his attention to the problems that real life sets him,

and see how much more difficult it is to find the solution then.

* * * * *

Cyrus Verd came to England in his thirty-fourth year, an age at which

many men are only at the commencement of their career. He had already

made his fortune. I cannot say exactly how rich he was. Many newspaper

paragraphs at the time gave estimates of his annual income--all

different. I should say that the only man who really knew was Cyrus Verd

himself. He owned steamships, railways, factories, mines, and enough

land for a small nation. On his arrival in London many stories were told

of his extravagance and eccentricity.

He was debating where he should reside, and a friend suggested that he

should take or build a house in Park Lane.

"Where is Park Lane?" asked Cyrus Verd. He had been only two days in

London.

"Runs along the east side of Hyde Park, in the most fashionable quarter.

Your coachman would know it."

Verd went to look at it, and returned.

"Yes," he said, "it would be a fair site for a house--one house. But

there seems to be some brick tenements there of some sort or other

already. I suppose I could get those cleared away?"

He made the attempt, and was very angry at first when he found that he

could not "get those cleared away." But he soon grew more philosophical.

"Your people," he observed, "cling to their little homes, I guess."

He was always much disappointed at first if he found there was anything

which he could not buy. He went over the National Gallery alone one

morning; he was a judge of pictures, and occasionally he put a pencil

cross on his catalogue. When he got downstairs again he said to the man

who handed him his umbrella:

"My name's Cyrus Verd, and I'm at the Metropole. Write that down. Send

me round the things I've marked on my list and my secretary will hand

you the cheque."

This story was much exaggerated in the newspapers; it was said that he

had offered to buy the entire National Gallery, building and all, as it

stood. I cannot say whether or not there was any truth in the report

which appeared about the same time, to the effect that he had

endeavoured to buy the Crown jewels; but, as far as I can judge his

character, it does not seem impossible.

At the same time it would be rash to attempt to judge his character only

from such reports as these. The secretary of a well-known charitable

institution made that mistake. He wrote to ask for a donation to the

institution, and guaranteed that it should be acknowledged by public

advertisement in four of the leading dailies. Cyrus Verd wrote back that

he had much pleasure in accepting the offer, and enclosed fourpence in

stamps. The acknowledgment appeared as promised, and once more made

Cyrus Verd a common topic of conversation.

But one of the strangest things that he did never got into the

newspapers at all. He left, intentionally, ten pounds in gold on the

seat of a railway carriage. On the following day he inquired at the Lost

Property Office if the money had been brought back. He was told, with a

smile, that it had not been brought back, and that there was no earthly

probability that it ever would be. He repeated the experiment, and again

failed to recover the money. He repeated it twenty times on different

lines, and at last a carriage-cleaner found the money and brought it

back. Cyrus Verd took the name and address of that carriage-cleaner,

made inquiries about him and then sent for him.

"I don't see why I should reward you at all. It's the company's

business. You're their servant, and such actions as yours increase the

feelings of security and confidence in their passengers. Are you suited

to a better position than you've got?"

"Yes, I am," said the man, "I'm a steady man, and I've a talent for

figures. I'm known for it among my mates."

"Call on the chairman of directors--here is his private address--give

him my card, explain the circumstances, and tell him from me that he is

to put you in a position of trust, with at least three times your

present wages."

The man came back to say that the chairman had laughed at him--had said

that he was not the man to whom the application should have been made,

and that there was no chance of its being entertained in any case.

"I must go and see him myself then," said Cyrus Verd.

The chairman was not in a very good temper.

"Really, Mr Verd, you'll be asking me to carry your luggage next. It's

no part of my duties as chairman of the directors to undertake business

of this kind. What that man ought to have done--"

"He did what I told him. You can get this put through if you like. Will

you?"

"Frankly, I won't. It creates a precedent. It--"

"One moment, sir. If you'll have a copy of Bradshaw brought in here I'll

show you something."

Now, the chairman knew that Cyrus Verd was eccentric, and so he was not

surprised. He did not respect eccentricity. But he respected capital;

and he knew that Cyrus Verd had already--thanks to his capital--had some

little games with railway companies. So he rang the bell, and a Bradshaw

was brought.

When the servant had gone Verd drew a penny blue chalk-pencil from his

pocket. He opened the Bradshaw, unfolded the map, and, without saying a

word, made certain marks upon it.

The chairman watched him closely, and his face changed. "Who's going to

do it?" he gasped. Then he repented, as a man does repent when he has

given himself away. "Parliament?" he said.

"That's all right," remarked Cyrus Verd, replacing his blue pencil.

"I've asked. They daren't block it."

"It wouldn't pay," the chairman said, with an effort at the careless

smile.

"That matters only to the man who runs it. Either way it would wreck

your line--and you. As my time here is short, don't pretend that it

wouldn't, because, of course, I know that you know that it would."

"Am I to understand," said the chairman, angrily, "that you come here to

threaten me with this new line?"

"Well, I was talking about a carriage-cleaner. I want him rewarded. I

want it done right away. When I want anything done I don't tell myself

that I won't spend more than a couple of millions on getting it done."

"Men like you ought not to be allowed to live. I tell you that plainly,

Mr Verd."

"There are no men like me. Good-afternoon, then."

"Oh, wait, wait! The man deserves to be rewarded, only these things must

be done in the regular way. If he will write to--"

"I'm going to no underlings," said Cyrus Verd, "and I'm in a hurry. Next

time I mark that map, _those marks will stop there_!"

The chairman seemed suddenly to recollect something. "What was this

about a carriage-cleaner? Oh, yes, it's irregular; but naturally you

wouldn't understand. I'll see about it myself."

"When?"

"Within six weeks."

"Days?"

"Weeks."

"Then it shan't be days. It shall be within six hours--a position of

trust and three times his present wages within six hours. The way you

talk makes me tired. If you know enough to come in when it rains, I

guess you'll drop this argument."

The chairman did drop it, and that same night the carriage-cleaner

received the official intimation of his promotion.

* * * * *

Cyrus Verd was young, fabulously wealthy, and unmarried. He was a tall,

broad-shouldered man. He was not exactly handsome, but he had that look

of power which, in the eyes of women, does just as well. When he first

came over he was the hope of many noble matrons with unmarried

daughters. He afterwards became their despair; and this was in

consequence of his marriage with Anna Fokes--a woman who had neither

wealth nor high position--she had been a governess. She was remarkably

beautiful, but her beauty was somewhat discounted by the fact that she

had--or was said to have--a trace of negro blood in her veins. When this

marriage was announced, a certain noble matron said a cruel thing to

Cyrus Verd. She congratulated him sardonically on having no racial

prejudices.

"I shall remember your kind words, countess," he said pleasantly.

Within a year the countess was a ruined woman. Evidence came to her

husband's knowledge which led him to divorce her. This terrible fall was

closely followed by the loss of a part of her private income. She was

left without a friend in the world and with much reduced means--a

disgraced woman. There were some who said that Cyrus Verd had

"remembered those kind words"; but if he was responsible for her

exposure and ruin he was careful not to let any evidence of his actions

appear.

It was seven years after his marriage that, as the _Times_ obituary

states, he gave up almost the whole of his property. He prepared a long

list of relations and friends of himself and of his wife, and of certain

charitable and religious institutions in which they were interested. He

reserved for himself an annual income of five hundred pounds only, which

to a man who had lived as a millionaire for years would be abject

poverty. The remainder was divided among these relations, friends and

institutions, and made over to them by deed of gift. Of course, many

people said that he was mad. If he was, his wife was mad also, for the

step that he took was planned by him with her, and she fully agreed to

it.

* * * * *

Personally, I do not think he was mad. I had expected him to take that

step, and I think I could produce evidence that in a private letter I

actually foretold it. For it happened by chance that I came upon him

when he was in the enjoyment of what he called his annual holiday, and

it was significant.

It was in an out-of-the-way Welsh village, one year before his marriage.

I was stopping there because it was out of the way chiefly--I had some

work to do. Cyrus Verd was there in a caravan, and he was masquerading.

He was "H. Jackson, photographer," a travelling photographer in a very

small way of business, with show-cases of fly-blown photographs of

posed rustics affixed to the outside of his caravan. He wore a shabby

serge suit, much stained with chemicals, and a soft felt hat. He had not

attempted to disguise his face; he had never allowed any portrait of

himself to appear in any illustrated paper, shop window, or public

gallery, and probably considered himself safe from recognition. But I

had once been in the same drawing-room with Cyrus Verd, and he had been

pointed out to me. He was not a man who could easily be forgotten. I

never had the least doubt that the shabby man who stood touting for

custom outside that caravan was Cyrus Verd.

I allowed him to photograph me. I remember that the price was seven

shillings and sixpence for a dozen, and that he bothered me to take two

dozen for fourteen shillings.

"No thanks, Mr Verd," I said.

He seemed to reflect for a moment, and then he asked me how I knew. I

told him where I met him.

"It's my only enjoyment," he said. "You won't spoil it--everybody thinks

I'm yachting."

"I won't spoil it," I said. "You might enjoy it always if you cared so

much about it."

"No, I couldn't. Thank you. I am obliged to you."

"All right," I said. "Good-morning," and I moved off. He called me back

again.

"You'll excuse me," he said, "but you've not paid for those

photographs."

"You haven't printed them yet."

"My rule is that payment must be made at the time of sitting."

"Well, I won't pay for a thing until I get it."

We squabbled about it, and finally came to a compromise. Then rather

abruptly he asked me to come to supper with him that night.

"And I warn you," he said, "that I live solely on what I make by this

photographic business."

Of course I went. We had supper in the caravan. It consisted of chops

and potatoes, which Cyrus Verd cooked. He cooked better than he

photographed. We drank beer, which Verd had fetched from the

public-house in a jug. He had no servant with him, and did everything

for himself. I jeered at him gently all through supper.

"It's very pretty," I said, "but it is play-acting. It's not genuine."

"It is absolutely genuine. I tell you that I love simplicity. Had I my

choice, I would always go on like this, and I like the work too. In this

little village I've already picked up enough orders to keep me busy for

a week. Every year I have a month of this, and I look forward to it as I

look forward to nothing else."

"What?" I said. "Do you think that this sort of thing proves that you

love simplicity? It proves the absolute contrary--that you love variety.

No one is compelled to live the life of a rich man against his will. If

you live that life for eleven months in the year, and the life of a poor

man for one month, you like to be rich eleven times as much as you like

to be poor."

"What you say," he said, "sounds plausible. But you don't know the

circumstances. I am sorry I cannot offer you a cigar. 'H. Jackson,

photographer,' cannot afford to smoke cigars."

"I have my own case here," I said.

I selected a cigar, lit it, put the case back in my pocket, and watched

Cyrus Verd. The fragrance reached him. He grew uneasy. He rose, and

began to put the supper things away in silence.

"Shall I help you?" I asked.

"No!" he said snappishly. He held out for about five minutes, and then

said, "Give me one of those cigars."

He opened the case with trembling hands, and took no notice of my

amusement at first. When his cigar was lit, and the first sigh of

satisfaction was over, he appeared aggrieved, and asked me what I was

laughing at.

"Go back and be a millionaire," I said. "You dress this part well,

and"--glancing round the caravan--"it's very correctly staged; but you

make the feeblest H. Jackson, peripatetic photographer, that ever

disgraced the British drama."

"Listen," he said eagerly. "H. Jackson is a poor man. As a rule he

smokes cheap shag in a clay. A gentleman comes along and offers him a

cigar. H. Jackson jumps at the treat, of course. Where's the

inconsistency?"

"I didn't offer you a cigar. You asked for it. Cyrus Verd could do that,

but H. Jackson could not."

"I've half a mind to pitch your beastly cigar out of the window!"

But he did not. He smoked that, and others, and talked delightfully. He

had a fine sense of humour, and was willing enough to laugh at himself

as a millionaire; but in the character of H. Jackson he had an ardent

belief in himself and a strong desire to be taken seriously.

After that, for a week, we always spent the evenings together. Gradually

I guessed at the "circumstances" to which he had alluded. Near to the

village was the country seat of a baronet, and Anna Fokes was governess

to his children, and Cyrus Verd was in love with Anna Fokes. He had met

her in the same place a year before. She and I knew who he really was;

but no one else in the village did. Her method of procedure was simple.

On the arrival of H. Jackson she took the baronet's children to be

photographed; afterwards she called every day to see if the photographs

were finished. He was, in fact, engaged to her before the night on which

I first had supper with him.

A week after my return to town I got a note from Cyrus Verd, asking me

to dine with him and "assist at the funeral of H. Jackson." I accepted.

We were alone, and the dinner was ridiculously magnificent. I

congratulated him on his engagement, which that morning had been made

public. He seemed in the best of spirits. After dinner he said:

"I am going to explain the death of H. Jackson. Money has power, and the

novelty of possession is attractive. But any other kind of power is

better worth while, and the novelty ceases."

"Also," I observed, "time flies, and one must not judge by appearances."

"Yes, I quite understand what you would imply. I am talking platitudes.

I guess, if the platitude happens to be the truth that doesn't matter.

The actual enjoyment to be obtained from money must soon go, and can

only be renewed in the enjoyment of another. I marry a poor woman who

has worked in a subservient position; in her enjoyment I shall enjoy

again. Wealth, and the power it gives, will be so new and attractive to

her that I may safely calculate on a fair period of very decent

second-hand enjoyment; consequently, H. Jackson may die."

"Wait," I said, "your wife's enjoyment will cease in the end, and yours

with it. What then?"

"Some women have a special gift for enjoying wealth for ever," he said

meditatively. "But you are right; Miss Fokes has not that gift.

Then--then--there will be a revival of H. Jackson, or something very

like it, perhaps in a less crude form."

* * * * *

This practically ended my acquaintance with Cyrus Verd. At first I still

saw him occasionally, but I could not afford to know millionaires, and

told him so. Afterwards, at the time when he renounced his wealth, I was

away from England.

I can see, of course, that a practised author might make something of a

character--a consistent whole--out of Cyrus Verd. I only give notes of

what came to my knowledge, and confess that I have not the imagination

requisite to connect them, supplement them, and give them that air of

probability which is always found in the best fiction, and so seldom in

real life.

THE FOUR-FINGERED HAND

Charles Yarrow held fours, but as he had come up against Brackley's

straight flush they only did him harm, leading him to remark--by no

means for the first time--that it did not matter what cards one held,

but only when one held them. "I get out here," he remarked, with

resignation. No one else seemed to care for further play. The two other

men left at once, and shortly afterwards Yarrow and Brackley sauntered

out of the club together.

"The night's young," said Brackley; "if you're doing nothing you may as

well come round to me."

"Thanks, I will. I'll talk, or smoke, or go so far as to drink; but I

don't play poker. It's not my night."

"I didn't know," said Brackley, "that you had any superstitions."

"Haven't. I've only noticed that, as a rule, my luck goes in runs, and

that a good run or a bad run usually lasts the length of a night's play.

There is probably some simple reason for it, if I were enough of a

mathematician to worry it out. In luck as distinct from arithmetic I

have no belief at all."

"I wish you could bring me to that happy condition. The hard-headed man

of the world, without a superstition or a belief of any kind, has the

best time of it."

They reached Brackley's chambers, lit pipes, and mixed drinks. Yarrow

stretched himself in a lounge chair, and took up the subject again,

speaking lazily and meditatively. He was a man of thirty-eight, with a

clean-shaven face; he looked, as indeed he was, travelled and

experienced.

"I don't read any books," he remarked, "but I've been twice round the

world, and am just about to leave England again. I've been alive for

thirty-eight years, and during most of them I have been living.

Consequently, I've formed opinions, and one of my opinions is that it is

better to dispense with superfluous luggage. Prejudices, superstitions,

beliefs of any kind that are not capable of easy and immediate proof are

superfluous luggage; one goes more easily without them. You implied just

now that you had a certain amount of this superfluous luggage, Brackley.

What form does it take? Do you turn your chair?--are you afraid of

thirteen at dinner?"

"No, nothing of that sort. I'll tell you about it. You've heard of my

grandfather--who made the money?"

"Heard of him? Had him rubbed into me in my childhood. He's in Smiles or

one of those books, isn't he? Started life as a navvy, educated himself,

invented things, made a fortune, gave vast sums in charity."

"That is the man. Well, he lived to be a fair age, but he was dead

before I was born. What I know of him I know from my father, and some of

it is not included in those improving books for the young. For instance,

there is no mention in the printed biography of his curious belief in

the four-fingered hand. His belief was that from time to time he saw a

phantom hand. Sometimes it appeared to him in the daytime, and sometimes

at night. It was a right hand with the second finger missing. He always

regarded the appearance of the hand as a warning. It meant, he supposed,

that he was to stop anything on which he was engaged; if he was about to

let a house, buy a horse, go a journey, or whatever it was, he stopped

if he saw the four-fingered hand."

"Now, look here," said Yarrow, "we'll examine this thing rationally. Can

you quote one special instance in which your grandfather saw this maimed

hand, broke off a particular project, and found himself benefited?"

"No. In telling my father about it he spoke quite generally."

"Oh, yes," said Yarrow, drily. "The people who see these things do speak

quite generally as a rule."

"But wait a moment. This vision of the four-fingered hand appears to

have been hereditary. My father also saw it from time to time. And here

I can give you the special instances. Do you remember the Crewe disaster

some years ago? Well, my father had intended to travel by the train that

was wrecked. Just as he was getting into the carriage he saw the

four-fingered hand. He at once got out and postponed his journey until

later in the day. Another occasion was two months before the failure of

Varings'. My father banked there. As a rule he kept a comparatively

small balance at the bank, but on this occasion he had just realised an

investment, and was about to place the result--six thousand pounds--in

the bank, pending re-investment. He was on the point of sending off his

confidential clerk with the money, when once more he saw the

four-fingered hand. Now at that time Varings' was considered to be as

safe as a church. Possibly a few people with special means of

information may have had some slight suspicion at the time, but my

father certainly had none. He had always banked with Varings, as his

father had done before him. However, his faith in the warning hand was

so great that instead of paying in the six thousand he withdrew his

balance that day. Is that good enough for you?"

"Not entirely. Mind, I don't dispute your facts, but I doubt if it

requires the supernatural to explain them. You say that the vision

appears to be hereditary. Does that mean that you yourself have ever

seen it?"

"I have seen it once."

"When?"

"I saw it to-night." Brackley spoke like a man suppressing some strong

excitement. "It was just as you got up from the card-table after losing

on your fours. I was on the point of urging you and the other two men to

go on playing. I saw the hand distinctly. It seemed to be floating in

the air about a couple of yards away from me. It was a small white hand,

like a lady's hand, cut short off at the wrist. For a second it moved

slowly towards me, and then vanished. Nothing would have induced me to

go on playing poker to-night."

"You are--excuse me for mentioning it--not in the least degree under the

influence of drink. Further, you are by habit an almost absurdly

temperate man. I mention these things because they have to be taken into

consideration. They show that you were not at any rate the victim of a

common and disreputable form of illusion. But what service has the hand

done you? We play a regular point at the club. We are not the excited

gamblers of fiction. We don't increase the points, and we never play

after one in the morning. At the moment when the hand appeared to you,

how much had you won?"

"Twenty-five pounds--an exceptionally large amount."

"Very well. You're a careful player. You play best when your luck's

worst. We stopped play at half-past eleven. If we had gone on playing

till one, and your luck had been of the worst possible description all

the time, we will say that you might have lost that twenty-five and

twenty-five more. To me it is inconceivable, but with the worst luck and

the worst play it is perhaps possible. Now then, do you mean to tell me

that the loss of twenty-five pounds is a matter of such importance to a

man with your income as to require a supernatural intervention to

prevent you from losing it?"

"Of course it isn't."

"Well, then, the four-fingered hand has not accomplished its mission. It

has not saved you from anything. It might even have been inconvenient.

If you had been playing with strangers and winning, and they had wished

to go on playing, you could hardly have refused. Of course, it did not

matter with us--we play with you constantly, and can have our revenge at

any time. The four-fingered hand is proved in this instance to have

been useless and inept. Therefore, I am inclined to believe that the

appearances when it really did some good were coincidences. Doubtless

your grandfather and father and yourself have seen the hand, but surely

that may be due to some slight hereditary defect in the seeing

apparatus, which, under certain conditions, say, of the light and of

your own health creates the illusion. The four-fingered hand is natural

and not supernatural, subjective and not objective."

"It sounds plausible," remarked Brackley. He got up, crossed the room,

and began to open the card-table. "Practical tests are always the most

satisfactory, and we can soon have a practical test." As he put the

candles on the table he started a little and nearly dropped one of them.

He laughed drily. "I saw the four-fingered hand again just then," he

said. "But no matter--come--let us play."

"Oh, the two game isn't funny enough."

"Then I'll fetch up Blake from downstairs; you know him. He never goes

to bed, and he plays the game."

Blake, who was a youngish man, had chambers downstairs. Brackley easily

persuaded him to join the party. It was decided that they should play

for exactly an hour. It was a poor game; the cards ran low, and there

was very little betting. At the end of the hour Brackley had lost a

sovereign, and Yarrow had lost five pounds.

"I don't like to get up a winner, like this," said Blake. "Let's go on."

But Yarrow was not to be persuaded. He said that he was going off to

bed. No allusion to the four-fingered hand was made in speaking in the

presence of Blake, but Yarrow's smile of conscious superiority had its

meaning for Brackley. It meant that Yarrow had overthrown a

superstition, and was consequently pleased with himself. After a few

minutes' chat Yarrow and Blake said good-night to Brackley, and went

downstairs together.

Just as they reached the ground-floor they heard, from far up the

staircase, a short cry, followed a moment afterwards by the sound of a

heavy fall.

"What's that?" Blake exclaimed.

"I'm just going to see," said Yarrow, quietly. "It seemed to me to come

from Brackley's rooms. Let's go up again."

They hurried up the staircase and knocked at Brackley's door. There was

no answer. The whole place was absolutely silent. The door was ajar;

Yarrow pushed it open, and the two men went in.

The candles on the card-table were still burning. At some distance from

them, in a dark corner of the room, lay Brackley, face downwards, with

one arm folded under him and the other stretched wide.

Blake stood in the doorway. Yarrow went quickly over to Brackley, and

turned the body partially over.

"What is it?" asked Blake, excitedly. "Is the man ill? Has he fainted?"

"Run downstairs," said Yarrow, curtly. "Rouse the porter and get a

doctor at once."

The moment Blake had gone, Yarrow took a candle from the card-table, and

by the light of it examined once more the body of the dead man. On the

throat there was the imprint of a hand--a right hand with the second

finger missing. The marks, which were crimson at first, grew gradually

fainter.

* * * * *

Some years afterwards, in Yarrow's presence, a man happened to tell some

story of a warning apparition that he himself had investigated.

"And do you believe that?" Yarrow asked.

"The evidence that the apparition was seen--and seen by more than one

person--seems to me fairly conclusive in this case."

"That is all very well. I will grant you the apparition if you like. But

why speak of it as a warning? If such appearances take place, it still

seems to me absurd and disproportionate to suppose that they do so in

order to warn us, or help us, or hinder us, or anything of the kind.

They appear for their own unfathomable reasons only. If they seem to

forbid one thing or command another, that also is for their own purpose.

I have an experience of my own which would tend to show that."

THE TOWER

In the billiard-room of the Cabinet Club, shortly after midnight, two

men had just finished a game. A third had been watching it from the

lounge at the end of the room. The winner put up his cue, slipped on his

coat, and with a brief "Good-night" passed out of the room. He was tall,

dark, clean-shaven and foreign in appearance. It would not have been

easy to guess his nationality, but he did not look English.

The loser, a fair-haired boy of twenty-five, came over to the lounge and

dropped down by the side of the elderly man who had been watching the

billiards.

"Silly game, ain't it, doctor?" he said cheerfully. The doctor smiled.

"Yes," he said, "Vyse is a bit too hot for you, Bill."

"A bit too hot for anything," said the boy. "He never takes any trouble;

he never hesitates; he never thinks; he never takes an easy shot when

there's a brilliant one to be pulled off. It's almost uncanny."

"Ah," said the doctor, reflectively, "it's a queer thing. You're the

third man whom I have heard say that about Vyse within the last week."

"I believe he's quite all right--good sort of chap, you know. He's

frightfully clever too--speaks a lot of beastly difficult Oriental

languages--does well at any game he takes up."

"Yes," said the doctor, "he is clever; and he is also a fool."

"What do you mean? He's eccentric, of course. Fancy his buying that

rotten tower--a sweet place to spend Christmas in all alone, I don't

think."

"Why does he say he's going there?"

"Says he hates the conventional Christmas, and wants to be out of it;

says also that he wants to shoot duck."

"That won't do," said the doctor. "He may hate the conventional

Christmas. He may, and he probably will, shoot duck. But that's not his

reason for going there."

"Then what is it?" asked the boy.

"Nothing that would interest you much, Bill. Vyse is one of the chaps

that want to know too much. He's playing about in a way that every

medical man knows to be a rotten, dangerous way. Mind, he may get at

something; if the stories are true he has already got at a good deal. I

believe it is possible for a man to develop in himself certain powers at

a certain price."

"What's the price?"

"Insanity, as often as not. Here, let's talk about something

pleasanter. Where are you yourself going this Christmas, by the way?"

"My sister has taken compassion upon this lone bachelor. And you?"

"I shall be out of England," said the doctor. "Cairo, probably."

The two men passed out into the hall of the club.

"Has Mr Vyse gone yet?" the boy asked the porter.

"Not yet, Sir William. Mr Vyse is changing in one of the dressing-rooms.

His car is outside."

The two men passed the car in the street, and noticed the luggage in the

tonneau. The driver, in his long leather coat, stood motionless beside

it, waiting for his master. The powerful headlight raked the dusk of the

street; you could see the paint on a tired woman's cheek as she passed

through it on her way home at last.

"See his game?" said Bill.

"Of course," said the doctor. "He's off to the marshes and that blessed

tower of his to-night."

"Well, I don't envy him--holy sort of amusement it must be driving all

that way on a cold night like this. I wonder if the beggar ever goes to

sleep at all?"

They had reached Bill's chambers in Jermyn Street.

"You must come in and have a drink," said Bill.

"Don't think so, thanks," said the doctor; "it's late, you know."

"You'd better," said Bill, and the doctor followed him in.

A letter and a telegram were lying on the table in the diminutive hall.

The letter had been sent by messenger, and was addressed to Sir William

Orlsey, Bart., in a remarkably small hand-writing. Bill picked it up,

and thrust it into his pocket at once, unopened. He took the telegram

with him into the room where the drinks had been put out, and opened it

as he sipped his whisky-and-soda.

"Great Scot!" he exclaimed.

"Nothing serious, I hope," said the doctor.

"I hope not. I suppose all children have got to have the measles some

time or another; but it's a bit unlucky that my sister's three should

all go down with it just now. That does for her house-party at

Christmas, of course."

A few minutes later, when the doctor had gone, Bill took the letter from

his pocket and tore it open. A cheque fell from the envelope and

fluttered to the ground. The letter ran as follows:

"DEAR BILL,--I could not talk to you to-night, as the doctor, who

happens to disapprove of me, was in the billiard-room. Of course, I

can let you have the hundred you want, and enclose it herewith with

the utmost pleasure. The time you mention for repayment would suit me

all right, and so would any other time. Suit your own convenience

entirely.

"I have a favour to ask of you. I know you are intending to go down to

the Leylands' for Christmas. I think you will be prevented from doing

so. If that is the case, and you have no better engagement, would you

hold yourself at my disposal for a week? It is just possible that I

may want a man like you pretty badly. There ought to be plenty of duck

this weather, but I don't know that I can offer any other

attraction.--Very sincerely yours,

"EDWARD VYSE."

Bill picked up the cheque, and thrust it into the drawer with a feeling

of relief. It was a queer invitation, he thought--funnily worded, with

the usual intimations of time and place missing. He switched off the

electric lights and went into his bedroom. As he was undressing a

thought struck him suddenly.

"How the deuce," he said aloud, "did he know that I should be prevented

from going to Polly's place?" Then he looked round quickly. He thought

that he had heard a faint laugh just behind him. No one was there, and

Bill's nerves were good enough. In twenty minutes he was fast asleep.

* * * * *

The cottage, built of grey stone, stood some thirty yards back from the

road, from which it was screened by a shrubbery. It was an ordinary

eight-roomed cottage, and it did well enough for Vyse and his servants

and one guest--if Vyse happened to want a guest. There was a pleasant

little walled garden of a couple of acres behind the cottage. Through a

doorway in the further wall one passed into a stunted and dismal

plantation, and in the middle of this rose the tower, far higher than

any of the trees that surrounded it.

Sir William Orlsey had arrived just in time to change before dinner.

Talk at dinner had been of indifferent subjects--the queer characters of

the village and the chances of sport on the morrow. Bill had mentioned

the tower, and his host had hastened to talk of other things. But now

that dinner was over, and the man who had waited on them had left the

room, Vyse of his own accord returned to the subject.

"Danvers is a superstitious ass," he observed, "and he's in quite enough

of a funk about that tower as it is; that's why I wouldn't give you the

story of it while he was in the room. According to the village

tradition, a witch was burned on the site where the tower now stands,

and she declared that where she burned the devil should have his house.

The lord of the manor at that time, hearing what the old lady had said,

and wishing to discourage house-building on that particular site, had it

covered with a plantation, and made it a condition of his will that this

plantation should be kept up."

Bill lit a large cigar. "Looks like checkmate," he said. "However,

seeing that the tower is actually there--"

"Quite so. This man's son came no end of a cropper, and the property

changed hands several times. It was divided and sub-divided. I, for

instance, only own about twenty acres of it. Presently there came along

a scientific old gentleman and bought the piece that I now have. Whether

he knew of the story, or whether he didn't, I cannot say, but he set to

work to build the tower that is now standing in the middle of the

plantation. He may have intended it as an observatory. He got the stone

for it on the spot from his own quarry, but he had to import his labour,

as the people in these parts didn't think the work healthy. Then one

fine morning before the tower was finished they found the old gentleman

at the bottom of his quarry with his neck broken."

"So," said Bill, "they say of course that the tower is haunted. What is

it that they think they see?"

"Nothing. You can't see it. But there are people who think they have

touched it and have heard it."

"Rot, ain't it?"

"I don't know exactly. You see, I happen to be one of those people."

"Then, if you think so, there's something in it. This is interesting. I

say, can't we go across there now?"

"Certainly, if you like. Sure you won't have any more wine? Come along,

then."

The two men slipped on their coats and caps. Vyse carried a lighted

stable-lantern. It was a frosty moonlit night, and the path was crisp

and hard beneath their feet. As Vyse slid back the bolts of the gate in

the garden wall, Bill said suddenly, "By the way, Vyse, how did you know

that I shouldn't be at the Leylands' this Christmas? I told you I was

going there."

"I don't know. I had a feeling that you were going to be with me. It

might have been wrong. Anyhow, I'm very glad you're here. You are just

exactly the man I want. We've only a few steps to go now. This path is

ours. That cart-track leads away to the quarry where the scientific

gentleman took the short cut to further knowledge. And here is the door

of the tower."

They walked round the tower before entering. The night was so still

that, unconsciously, they spoke in lowered voices and trod as softly as

possible. The lock of the heavy door groaned and screeched as the key

turned. The light of the lantern fell now on the white sand of the floor

and on a broken spiral staircase on the further side. Far up above one

saw a tangle of beams and the stars beyond them. Bill heard Vyse saying

that it was left like that after the death in the quarry.

"It's a good solid bit of masonry," said Bill, "but it ain't a cheerful

spot exactly. And, by Jove! it smells like a menagerie."

"It does," said Vyse, who was examining the sand on the floor.

Bill also looked down at the prints in the sand. "Some dog's been in

here."

"No," said Vyse, thoughtfully. "Dogs won't come in here, and you can't

make them. Also, there were no marks on the sand when I left the place

and locked the door this afternoon. Queer, isn't it?"

"But the thing's a blank impossibility. Unless, of course, we are to

suppose that--"

He did not finish his sentence, and, if he had finished it, it would not

have been audible. A chorus of grunting, growling and squealing broke

out almost from under his feet, and he sprang backwards. It lasted for a

few seconds, and then died slowly away.

"Did you hear that?" Vyse asked quietly.

"I should rather think so."

"Good; then it was not subjective. What was it?"

"Only one kind of beast makes that row. Pigs, of course--a whole drove

of them. It sounded as if they were in here, close to us. But as they

obviously are not, they must be outside."

"But they are not outside," said Vyse. "Come and see."

They hunted the plantation through and through with no result, and then

locked the tower door and went back to the cottage. Bill said very

little. He was not capable of much self-analysis, but he was conscious

of a sudden dislike of Vyse. He was angry that he had ever put himself

under an obligation to this man. He had wanted the money for a gambling

debt, and he had already repaid it. Now he saw Vyse in the light of a

man with whom one should have no dealings, and the last man from whom

one should accept a kindness. The strange experience that he had just

been through filled him with loathing far more than with fear or wonder.

There was something unclean and diabolical about the whole thing that

made a decent man reluctant to question or to investigate. The filthy

smell of the brutes seemed still to linger in his nostrils. He was

determined that on no account would he enter the tower again, and that

as soon as he could find a decent excuse he would leave the place

altogether.

A little later, as he sat before the log fire and filled his pipe, he

turned to his host with a sudden question: "I say, Vyse, why did you

want me to come down here? What's the meaning of it all?"

"My dear fellow," said Vyse, "I wanted you for the pleasure of your

society. Now, don't get impatient. I also wanted you because you are the

most normal man I know. Your confirmation of my experiences in the tower

is most valuable to me. Also, you have good nerves, and, if you will

forgive me for saying so, no imagination. I may want help that only a

man with good nerves would be able to give."

"Why don't you leave the thing alone? It's too beastly."

Vyse laughed. "I'm afraid my hobby bores you. We won't talk about it.

After all, there's no reason why you should help me?"

"Tell me just what it is that you wanted."

"I wanted you if you heard this whistle"--he took an ordinary

police-whistle down from the mantelpiece--"any time to-night or

to-morrow night, to come over to the tower at once and bring a revolver

with you. The whistle would be a sign that I was in a tight place--that

my life, in fact, was in danger. You see, we are dealing here with

something preternatural, but it is also something material; in addition

to other risks, one risks ordinary physical destruction. However, I

could see that you were repelled by the sight and the sound of these

beasts, whatever they may be; and I can tell you from my own experience

that the touch of them is even worse. There is no reason why you should

bother yourself any further about the thing."

"You can take the whistle with you," said Bill. "If I hear it I will

come."

"Thanks," said Vyse, and immediately changed the subject. He did not say

why he was spending the night in the tower, or what it was he proposed

to do there.

* * * * *

It was three in the morning when Bill was suddenly startled out of his

sleep. He heard the whistle being blown repeatedly. He hurried on some

clothes and dashed down into the hall, where his lantern and revolver

lay all ready for him. He ran along the garden path and through the door

in the wall until he got to the tower. The sound of the whistle had

ceased now, and everything was horribly still. The door of the tower

stood wide open, and without hesitation Bill entered, holding his

lantern high.

The tower was absolutely empty. Not a sound was to be heard. Bill called

Vyse by name twice loudly, and then again the awful silence spread over

the place.

Then, as if guided by some unseen hand, he took the track that led to

the quarry, well knowing what he would find at the bottom of it.

* * * * *

The jury assigned the death of Vyse to an accident, and said that the

quarry should be fenced in. They had no explanation to offer of the

mutilation of the face, as if by the teeth of some savage beast.

THE FUTILITY OF WILLIAM PENARDEN

"Let the great book of the world be your principal study."

CHESTERFIELD.

General Penarden, C.B., married late in life, and had one son, who was

intended by General Penarden to follow his father's profession, to be

V.C., and D.S.O., and to be a bright and shining light. As the

intentions of destiny did not precisely agree with the intentions of

General Penarden, it is, perhaps, just as well that the old man died

when William, his son, was a boy of six. He was thus saved some

disappointment.

But even in those brief years he was not saved all disappointment. He

made, grimly, a list of the different things of which the child was

frightened, and it was a very long list. Many, of course, were things of

which any child is frightened; many others came into a doubtful

category; the fear would have been excusable, perhaps, in a girl. There

was left a residue which was all wrong and quite inexplicable. The

General, though disappointed, did not despair. He quoted instances of

brave men who had had a timid childhood. His optimistic programme was

that his son should have it all knocked out of him by the paternal

hand, by the severe discipline of a public school, and by experience of

dangers. Familiarity of them would breed contempt, and all would yet be

well. On the day before his death from apoplexy he imagined to himself

despatches in which his son's name figured brilliantly.

The General had married a woman much younger than himself. She was

beautiful and she was bored. She came of a decaying race. The brilliant

vices and wild extravagances of her eighteenth-century forefathers had

ended with the usual and prosaic sequel of tainted blood and fallen

fortunes. Possibly there were few things that bored this tired London

woman more than her son William. She remembered to talk about him a

little to her friends; she had the best possible care taken of him by

the best possible servants; she gave him expensive presents on the days

appointed. But she did not want to be with him very much. When she was

with him she either spoiled him or bullied him, and more often she

bullied him. At the age of twelve, William, at a preparatory school

which he hated, was bidden to write an essay on the subject of war. He

wrote childishly, and with many faults of punctuation and spelling, to

the effect that war was the wickedest thing in the world, and that a

soldier's profession was the most inhuman and abominable. By chance the

essay came into his mother's way, and she laughed till she cried over

it. He was not a pretty boy, and he could never be admirable, but there

seemed to be some chance that he might, at least, be quaint. At the age

of fourteen he made to his mother a profound observation, to wit, that

though for many long years past he himself had been getting older and

older, she had never changed one little bit. For this she kissed him; he

might have found her in a mood when she would have struck him for it.

It was quite clear by this time that he was not to be a soldier. The

weakness of his physique supported the firmness of his wishes in this

respect. He could have never passed the doctor. At his public school,

which he hated even more than the preparatory school, medical

certificates freed him to some extent from compulsory games. He was a

muff at all games, and he was no great scholar; yet he was less

unpopular at school than might have been expected. He had no pretensions

whatever, and he was very obliging. He would do anything for anybody. He

had the fatal gift of imagination, and a few eccentricities that amused

other boys. Boys treat with good humour that with which they are amused.

There was, for instance, a certain short cut, a footpath across some

fields, in common use by the boys, which William Penarden resolutely

refused to take. He gave no reasons, but he said that he could not take

that path. So he went all the way round, and was frequently late, and

from that came trouble. But he remained obstinate. It was one of the

things that pleased the other boys. "Mad as a hatter," they would say,

and quote his dislike of the field-path in proof.

It was during his first term at Cambridge that he heard from his mother

that she intended to marry again. She had not aged at all, except to the

most careful observer and to her own maid, and even her own maid did not

know everything. It was, perhaps, rather remarkable that she had not

re-married before, but she had always preferred the admiration of the

many to the devotion of one, and, by the terms of the late General's

will, her re-marriage made her son much richer and herself much poorer.

It may have occurred to her that this prolonged struggle with age could

not be carried on indefinitely. As for the money, she was marrying a

wealthy baronet, and knew how to take care of herself. It was true that

he was a sportsman who hated London, and that she would have to live for

the most part in the country. But the things which are supposed to amuse

had bored her so long that she had begun to wonder if she could not be

amused by the things that are supposed to bore. Then there was always

the resource of foreign travel. She knew a doctor who could generally be

counted upon to order her to the place to which she wished to go.

William was not much surprised by the news, and he wrote the kindest of

letters to his mother. He was really an extremely kind young man. He had

already met many characters of doubtful probity. None of them had ever

asked him to lend money; he had always anticipated them by the offer of

a loan. On the occasions when his mother got to hear of this she had

been unfailingly very, very mad with him. At present, William was quite

ready to accept the situation, but the situation was not quite ready to

accept William. He was not much of a sportsman, and his new father said

candidly that he could see nothing in the boy. Lady Quyne, formerly Mrs

Penarden, became suddenly serious and flagrantly moral on the subject of

William's career. She spelt career with a capital letter in her letters

to him; she pronounced it in italics in her talk. It was true that it

was not necessary for him to make an income, but no good ever came of

idleness. She had, by the way, made an exhaustive trial of it herself

for the last twenty years, and was, therefore, in a position to speak.

She suggested politics and the Diplomatic Service; he had no taste for

either. Above all, she emphasised the bad effect which a prolonged

homelife had upon a young man. Before he took his degree--it was a pass

degree--he had learned to interpret this correctly, and spent very

little of his vacations at home. He had made friends who found him

amiable and liked him to visit them occasionally. Sometimes he

travelled. When he was at home he did not see very much of his mother.

There were always other visitors staying in the house. Sir Charles Quyne

was pessimistic on the subject of William. "He can play the piano a

bit," he said, "and he can drive the car. And there is not one other

solitary damned thing that he can do. I wish to goodness he would get

married."

William did not get married, but he kept out of the way, which, after

all, was almost as good. Further, to please his mother, he said that he

proposed ultimately to become a candidate for Parliament. In the

meantime, he would like to devote two or three years to serious

preparation. Lady Quyne observed that he could cram up all that a Member

needed to know in two or three weeks, but did not remonstrate further.

William took a riverside cottage and a small flat in London. He went

from one to the other as the mood took him, and as a rule made the

journey on his motor-car. He liked driving the car, but it was rather a

fearful pleasure. He was, perhaps, the most cautious driver extant, and

the secret amusement of his hireling chauffeur. When William went from

his cottage to his flat in town, he made the chauffeur take the wheel

when they approached London. William did not like driving through thick

traffic at any time, and did not like driving by night at all.

One Saturday night in June, Dolling, the chauffeur, received an

unexpected visit from a long-absent brother. The visitor arrived just at

the moment when he and his master were about to start for London in the

car. Timidity and amiability struggled in the breast of William

Penarden, and amiability won.

"I shan't want you, Dolling," he said, "I can manage it all right by

myself."

Mr Dolling was sure that it was very kind of him. It was a bright

moonlight night, with deep, bothering shadows.

William started slowly. He already felt nervous. How would it be if he

gave up the London idea altogether? He could telegraph in the morning to

the friend whom he was to have met. He turned off from the London road,

where a circuit of two or three miles would bring him back to his

cottage again. There was a dark stretch of road here, trees on either

side almost meeting overhead. Beyond, the road lay white and open.

William went into his third speed as he emerged from the darkness. At

that moment a black figure shot out from the hedge into the road right

across the way of the car. In a moment or two William had jammed on the

brakes, and the car stood still, with the engines racing. Had he touched

the man or not? It seemed to him to be a long while before he could

force himself to look round and see. When he did so, he saw the black

figure lying motionless on the road in the bright moonlight.

"Are you hurt?" William called hoarsely. All was silent. With great care

William turned his car round in the road and crawled up alongside. He

could see now that it was the figure of a man, raggedly dressed,

absolutely motionless. The hat had fallen off, and the moonlight made

the thick, white hair brilliant.

"Are you hurt?" William asked again. He stared hard to see if he could

detect the slightest movement. There was none. He listened intently,

stopping his engines. The whole night seemed to him full of the silence

of the dead.

He knew perfectly well what he ought to do, but sheer panic had hold of

him. He touched the switch and his engines started again. For once in

his life he drove recklessly, and he drove to London. There would be

ample evidence that he had been intending to go to London when he

started, and there would be no reason why he should ever have taken his

car on the road where the dead body would be found. No one had seen him;

no suspicion could attach to him.

Long before he reached London, the drunken tramp, whom William supposed

that he had killed, sat up. The car had never touched him. He had fallen

in the road and had been slightly stunned. He rubbed his aged and

disreputable head and grumbled to himself that this was what came of

those sanguinary motors. Then he walked home, kicked his wife, and slept

the sleep of the just.

The price that William Penarden was to pay for his cowardice was heavy

enough. He was never to know that he had not even touched the man.

Coincidence was already busy to convince him that he had killed that

man, and to keep the terror of it fresh in his mind for the remaining

two years of his life.

He came back from London by train on Sunday afternoon. He told Dolling

that he was ill, and that he did not feel up to driving the car. Dolling

could fetch it back from the garage on Monday. Dolling looked remarkably

serious. He did not know if his master had heard of it, but a terrible

thing had happened not three miles away from them. A man had been found

dead in the road on Saturday night, and it was supposed that he had been

knocked down by a motor-car. It was not the London road; it was just

where--

William Penarden stopped him abruptly and savagely. It was all true,

then, and not the dream that he had hoped to find it.

Yes, it was true enough, but it was another man and another car. The

hoary reprobate who had been dazzled by the head-lights of Penarden's

car, and had stunned himself in his fall, was now no worse than he

usually was after his usual Saturday night.

For many weeks Penarden carefully avoided the newspapers. He was afraid

of what he would find there. After that came a feeling of security, but

never a moment's peace. That brilliant white hair in the moonlight wove

itself into the fabric of his dreams. That black figure lurched ever

before his car, till Penarden had a nervous breakdown and gave up

motoring. When he got a little better, the chief question in his mind

was how long he could stand it, how long it would be before his mind

gave way and in his ravings he let loose his secret. Morose, nervous,

ill, he saw no one. For a long time he travelled. Change of scene was an

opiate. It put the day of madness a little further off.

* * * * *

The poor man did his best. The political career was now definitely given

up. Lady Quyne spoke with a sigh to the more intimate part of her circle

of her son's incurable idleness. On his return to England he had yielded

to archaeology; it was a subject which had always interested him, and he

looked to it now to take his mind off. He journeyed from one cathedral

city to another, asking erudite questions, making rubbings of brasses,

and always haunted.

In the course of his wanderings in quest of the quaint he stopped at a

provincial town, the normal serenity of which was in a state of

temporary interruption owing to some reliability trials of motors being

held in its neighbourhood. Penarden drove to the hotel which the railway

porter impressed upon him was the only one likely to have accommodation

for such as himself, and asked for a room. The clerk announced

mournfully that "only No. 54 was unoccupied, and--well--before offering

it to the gentleman he had better see the manager."

That official saw the class of man he was dealing with, and regretted

deeply that he had no other room. But the reliability trials were on,

and his resources were strained to the uttermost. It was all that he had

to offer, and it was on the top floor of an annexe, the decoration of

which was not yet completed. The painters' step-ladders and planks still

lingered in the corridor. The view from the window was obstructed by a

mean building scarcely eight feet away. True, the mean building had been

condemned and was to come down; and the decorations would be finished

and the workmen would be out in a fortnight; but in the meantime--

Well, in the meantime, William Penarden did not care much in what room

he failed to get to sleep, and he accepted the bedroom that was offered.

He even managed to sleep in it, until in the early hours he was aroused

by the waiter (in dress trousers and the jacket of his pyjamas), who

told him that the building opposite was well alight, and that they hoped

that the annexe would not catch, the wind being favourable to them, but

that Mr Penarden had better get down at once and bring his travelling

bag with him.

"Right," said Penarden, and sent the waiter to wake up the others. Then

he dressed quickly, and looked out of his window down to the alley

beneath. The fire brigade had not yet arrived. Two policemen were doing

their best to keep the narrow alley clear. An ugly old woman, in violent

hysterics, was screaming, "They're up there!" and a man was trying to

quiet her. Then Penarden gave a great sigh of relief, for here was the

chance of expiation. He took the longest of the planks that the painters

had left and ran it through his own window so that it dropped on a

window-ledge of the burning house opposite. As a rule, he had no head at

all for heights, but now he felt perfectly unperturbed. He did not

attempt to walk along the plank, for he was not giving a circus

exhibition, but he began to work himself along it slowly in a sitting

position, taking great care not to jolt the end of it off the

window-ledge opposite. An authoritative voice below shouted to him to go

back. He went on. He reached the window opposite and flung it open. A

volley of black and stifling smoke poured forth and he nearly fell. Then

he climbed into the room, and the last that was seen of him was that he

stood at the window, taking off his coat to put it over his head before

he could go further. He was not seen again alive.

And, as his mother, Lady Quyne, observed, it was all so absolutely

futile. The people in the house had already got out, and he had let

himself be guided by the hysterical raving of some chance woman in the

crowd. So he annoyed her almost as much in death as he had done in life.

But it is possible that his death, horrible though it was, was for him

of an extreme happiness.

THE PATHOS OF THE COMMONPLACE

He was a middle-aged man when he first came to the town. He had taken an

appointment as clerk to a firm of solicitors, and he was happy in that

appointment, regarding it as a step upwards. He was small in stature and

wild in manner. His eyes had a hesitating look in them, and he pressed

his thin lips tightly together, as though to counterbalance his look of

hesitation and make himself appear rather firm. He found himself

furnished apartments in a house that was one of a row on the very

outskirts of the great town. They were two rooms at the top of the

house, small and shabbily furnished, looking out on a piece of waste

land at the back. On this piece of waste land there was one large tree

growing. At the time when he first took the rooms he was talkative and

told the landlady all about himself.

"My name is Peters. You see, I've just got a step upwards rather, by

being appointed clerk to Grantham & Flynders. Formerly, I used to keep

the books for Flynders's cousin, who's a grocer in a small way at

Melstowe--oh, quite a comparatively small way."

"Really now," said Mrs Marks, a good woman, but not always logical; "and

then for this Flynders to give himself those airs--and his cousin no

more than that! Ah! I've many a time said that half the world doesn't

know who the other half's relations are!"

"So it is!" replied Peters. "I may say--I think I may say--that I've

done a good deal for Flynders's cousin. He's taken my advice more than

once, notably in an extension of the counter-trade in effervescents

during the hot weather, and he's found it pay him. Well, _he_ knew that

I could do a good deal better than I was doing. I'd taught myself

things, you see. There was shorthand now. At Melstowe my shorthand was,

if it's not to use too strong a term, going to rot, simply going to

rot--in a grocery and general, there's no use for it. I pointed that all

out to Flynders's cousin, and he--being good-natured and seeing what I

was--got me this berth with this Flynders himself. So I left Melstowe,

and I left Flynders's cousin--left him, thanks to me, doing to my

certain knowledge some gross more in the lemonade than he had ever done

in the past." Peters paused, and looked proud of himself. "Mind," he

went on, rather weakly, "I'm telling you all this not from any--any

desire to tell anyone anything, but because I may be giving up these

rooms in two or three years, or even less. You see, I've taken one of

those steps upwards that may lead to anything. In a post like mine you

just work yourself up and work yourself up. Starting with what I may

call family influence, and having rather a strong natural turn, I may

be made managing clerk in no time; then, perhaps, Flynders dies, and

I'm took in. 'Grantham & Peters' wouldn't sound bad. Only then, of

course, I shouldn't keep these rooms--I should be taking a house of my

own."

Mrs Marks considered this, not unjustly, to be a little wild. But it was

cheaper always to humour a lodger; and she mostly chose the cheapest.

"Then you'd be getting married," she said.

"Under the circumstances I should ask Flynders's cousin's second

daughter to--to--"

"To consider it," suggested the landlady.

"To _re_-consider it," said Peters, sadly and correctively. He had a

nervous anxiety to get away from the subject. He glanced out of the

window. "I call that a pleasant lookout," he said. "Being high up, and

that sycamore touching the window nearly, it ain't unlike Zaccheus."

"That's no sycamore, Mr Peters. It's a plane."

"I don't know about such things. I ain't a talker as a rule. It may be

that I'm a bit excited at entering on a new sp'ere, a sp'ere from which

much may be hoped. Not for worlds would I have 'em know in the office

that I've got ambitions--oh, no!"

The landlady moved to the door. "Will there be anything else now?"

"A little tea, if it's not too much trouble," said Peters. "I have a

partiality for tea."

"You shall have it," said Mrs Marks. She did a good deal with the manner

and the tone of the voice. Peters vaguely understood that all this was

exceptional, and must not occur again; he must not make a practice of

taking up Mrs Marks's precious time by sheer garrulousness; and he must

not get into the habit of ordering tea or anything else that he

wanted--he must wait until it was brought to him spontaneously. He began

to unpack his few belongings and put them away neatly. He had a

picture--an engraving that he had purchased, ready framed, in Melstowe.

It represented David playing before Saul. He hung it over the

mantelpiece. Beneath stood a partly-decayed model of a Swiss mountain

and chalet, protected by a glass case.

When everything was tidy Peters sat down and drank his tea, and thought

about his ambitions.

* * * * *

Now, Mr Peters, as will have been gathered, was as ignorant as a child

of the manner in which promotion takes place in a solicitor's office,

and of the fact that he had no chance whatever. He was conscientious and

patient, and could do mechanical work; he was quite regular. Some men

can do a thing one day which they cannot do on the next, but Peters was

never unexpected. He was invariable in his merits, and in his

incompetence. With him Nature had drawn a line, and said, "Peters, you

are never going beyond that."

His disappointment dawned very slowly upon him. He found that a

solicitor's office was not what he had supposed it to be. Neither

Grantham nor Flynders was at all by way of being intimate with him; in

fact, they rarely spoke to him, except to dictate a letter; it was the

managing clerk who told him what to do, and he always did it as well as

he could, and that was never very well, nor very badly. Sometimes he

thought with regret of the nearly social terms upon which he had been

with Flynders's cousin; Flynders's cousin had taken his advice about the

lemonade. Now he was not on social terms with anybody. He was not good

at making friends. He did not get on very well with the other clerks.

They were not serious; they played practical jokes upon him, which he

took, as a rule, with his accustomed mildness; once or twice he lost his

temper, and then he was undignified but very funny.

His position was not in any danger. He was careful, methodical,

punctual. It was only that his step upwards had been the last step that

he was able to take in that direction. He had found his level. In the

first few months of his appointment he had purchased a large law-book

second hand. He picked that one because it was so very cheap, and it was

so very cheap because it was also so very obsolete; but Peters did not

know this. He studied his book, without entirely understanding it, by

the light of an evil-smelling lamp in the long evenings. When his

disappointment had finally dawned upon him, he took the book back to the

second-hand bookseller and tried to get him to purchase it again; but

that was of no use. It had taken the second-hand man some years to sell

that book once, and he did not feel inclined to recommence the struggle.

So Peters put it up on a shelf and did his best to forget it. Now he

read Mrs Marks's newspaper (she obliged him with the loan of it) in the

evening. On one occasion another clerk lent him something described as a

regular spicy novel. Peters read a few pages, but he did not like it,

and gave it back.

He began to be sorry that on his first arrival he had been so

confidential with his landlady; he had given her a false impression, and

he must correct it. So one day he mentioned to her that he had

relinquished the notion of a partnership.

"Ah, yes," she said. She had quite forgotten about it, but one must

verbally humour lodgers. Besides, she had an apposite observation to

make. "I've often remarked," she said, "that if we _could_ all have

everything we wanted, there wouldn't be enough to go round."

Peters felt a little lonely. One day was very much like another. He

always went to bed at the same time, and always rose at the same time.

His life seemed to be going on by machinery with himself left out of

it. He had a fancy that it was the plane tree which woke him in the

morning; its boughs touched lightly against his window sometimes when

the wind blew. He was rather attached to that tree. In the summer it

looked so cool and pleasant. There was a door at the back of the house,

leading on to that piece of waste land, and he would have liked to have

gone outside and sat under the tree in the hot weather. But he doubted

if he had any right to use that back door. He had a right to his two

rooms and to the front door and staircase which led to them; but he was

doubtful about the back door. On one or two occasions he had

inadvertently exceeded his rights, and Mrs Marks had seemed to him

rather put out. As a matter of fact, Mrs Marks was very well satisfied

with him. He was a good lodger, gave no trouble, and paid his book

punctually; he rarely rang, never seemed to mind if the bell was not

answered, went to church twice every Sunday, and was a credit to the

house. He was an economical man, and was putting by a little money. He

had a small sum of his own--L20 a year--that his father had left him,

or, as he preferred to call it, a certain private income independent of

his salary. The days went on; the old tree looked in at his window and

seemed interested in him, and he was interested in the tree, noting the

way it took the seasons. Otherwise there was nothing, and it was rather

lonely.

And then one day Mrs Marks brought him a piece of news. Her little

niece, Elsa, was coming to spend a holiday with her. She thought she

would mention it, because there were some lodgers who objected to

children.

Of course Peters was delighted to say that he did not object to children

at all. "Oh, and about that back door, Mrs Marks," he added. "I've

sometimes thought I'd like to make use of it, so as to sit out under

that tree of a warm evening."

"Most certainly, Mr Peters, and no need to ask either."

* * * * *

Under the plane tree Peters found a thin girl, with a white dress, black

stockings, yellow hair, and a large doll. He gazed at her mildly.

"Are you Elsa?"

"Yes. Are you the lodger?"

"Yes." He paused for want of ideas, and added that it was a fine

Saturday afternoon.

She had much more self-possession than he had. She looked at him

critically. "Were you going to sit out here, lodger?"

"I had been thinking of it."

"Well, do it then."

He sat down beside her, and said that she had a nice doll.

"Yes; its name is Mrs Markham. I'm giving her up, because I'm nearly

nine, and it's silly to keep on with dolls when you're nearly grown up.

I used to have six dolls, and I've given them all up except Mrs Markham.

She'll have to go too."

"I say, how do you play with dolls?"

"You pretend things. Can you do that?"

"Bless you, yes!" said Peters, cheerfully. "I can pretend anything you

like. What shall it be?"

"Let's pretend it's night."

"All right. It's night. And what do you do then?"

"Well, if it's night, of course we must put Mrs Markham to bed. I've got

her nightdress in my pocket." She pulled it out and smoothed it on her

knee. "Now, I must undress her." But she did not do it; she sat quite

still, humming a little tune, while Peters watched her with interest.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked.

"I'm waiting," she said, with some severity, "for you to look the other

way. I can't undress Mrs Markham while you're staring at her."

Peters blushed, apologised, and looked the other way. Presently he was

told that he might turn round again; Mrs Markham was properly attired,

and asleep, with her head supported by part of a brick.

"Capital!" exclaimed Peters.

"Hush!" said Elsa, reproachfully. "It doesn't seem as if you could

pretend very well. Mrs Markham's asleep, and so we must speak in

whispers. Now, what are you, besides being a lodger?"

"I'm a clerk to a firm of solicitors," Peters replied, in the repressed

and husky voice enjoined upon him.

"That all?"

"I'm afraid so. I had expected to be one of the firm, but there are

difficulties. It seems to be usual for a solicitor to be articled, and I

doubt if the firm will see its way to--"

Elsa yawned and interrupted. "That'll do. This isn't any good. Let's

play at something else. Can't you think of _anything_?"

Peters had an idea. He passed a small confectioner's shop on his way

from business, and he had observed and remembered a label in the window.

"Look here, Elsa, do you think you could manage a liquorice jujube?"

Elsa looked down at the grass and waggled one foot nervously; her eyes

seemed to get larger.

"Yes, thank you," she said demurely, "I think I could."

So they went off to the confectioner's shop. Peters cross-examined the

woman behind the counter almost imperiously as to the presence of

deleterious mineral colouring matter in the desired sweetmeat. The woman

answered him with cold confidence:

"The liquorice jujube takes its colour from the liquorice, which is a

vegetable and wholesome."

Then the purchase was made, and they sauntered back--Elsa slowly

becoming sticky, and Peters smiling abundantly.

* * * * *

Peters was lonely no longer while Elsa's holiday lasted. As a rule she

made suggestions, and he acted upon them. She wanted to know why he

never went on the river; so one afternoon he took her. A man from the

boat-house rowed them.

"Why don't you row yourself?" asked Elsa.

"Because," Peters answered, as he ran the boat's nose hard into a thorn

bush, "I have to steer. Mind your head--I took that a little too close."

The man from the boat-house backed them out. Similar incidents had

occurred frequently since Peters took the lines. At the boatman's

suggestion he now relinquished them.

In the course of her holiday Mrs Markham, so Elsa said, died; she was

buried under the plane tree. Peters dug the grave with his pocket-knife

and a portion of a broken tea-cup. When the funeral service was over

Peters produced a toy cricket set, and proposed a game. Elsa went in,

and Peters bowled. After an hour and a half she retired hot; she was not

out. Peters had bowled her twice, but on each occasion the ball was

disqualified by the umpire. Elsa was the umpire. On the first occasion

he had forgotten to say play, and on the second he had bowled faster

than the rules of cricket permitted. Peters did not get an innings--that

was characteristic of him.

On Sundays Peters took Elsa to church. She refused to go more than once

a Sunday, because her father went only once; if she went twice, she

explained, it would be like saying that her father was a bad man; and he

was a very good man. Peters asked her what prayers she said night and

morning.

"I used to have special ones," she said, "but I've forgotten them.

Besides, I'm too old for them; they were baby things. Now I say any

colic out of the prayer-book. They're all good."

"I don't think that's quite right," said Peters.

"Pa," she observed, with subtle relevancy, "used to say that all

s'listers were liars."

"Well, I'm _not_ a solicitor," Peters objected triumphantly.

He remembered two prayers for morning and evening that he had learned

when he was a boy. He copied them out in an exquisite hand, with Old

English titles, on a sheet of tinted cardboard. Then he ruled a frame

round them--three thin red lines within a broad black line. He was proud

of his work. He presented it to Elsa. The wayward Elsa chose to be

pleased with it, and owned that Peters wrote better than she did. She

took the card away to her room at once--"to try them," she explained.

* * * * *

Peters found himself very dull indeed when Elsa had gone. He thought it

over, and concluded that he was a man who needed companionship. One

night he wrote a long letter--not a love-letter--to Flynders's cousin's

second daughter, and posted it; he got no reply, and a few months

afterwards he read in Mrs Marks's newspaper the announcement that

Flynders's cousin's second daughter had married the curate.

"She was always one for social success," Peters reflected.

He wrote to Elsa, and she also did not answer--she had explained to him

that he must not expect it, because she disliked writing letters. He

sent her every year a birthday card (with a present), a Christmas card

(also with a present), and a valentine. She sent him, so far as he knew,

nothing at all; but one year he received a very ugly valentine, an

insulting valentine. He thought that it must have come either from Elsa

or from that young clerk who had lent him the really spicy novel.

One day that young clerk seemed almost friendly to Peters. "You're a

lonely old chap," he said to him in the luncheon hour. "Why don't you

buy a dog? It would be a companion to you." Peters thought it rather a

good idea. As it happened, the young clerk had one that he wanted to

sell; he described it as a faithful, pure-bred, sweet-tempered

fox-terrier. It's name was Tommy. Peters bought it, and its kennel was

located under the plane tree.

Tommy liked almost everyone except Peters. He would follow anyone except

Peters. If he was in the mood to snap at anybody, he preferred to snap

at Peters. Mrs Marks (under a special pecuniary arrangement) agreed to

wash the dog. But she soon pleaded for the use of a muzzle on those

occasions.

"For the way that dog turns against anything in the shape of soap and

water is pretty nigh human. Instink, they calls it."

Peters thought that muzzles were inhuman, and said that he would wash

the dog himself. The first time he tried Tommy bit him in three places,

and escaped before the operation was over. He bolted into the street,

ran away, and never came back.

So Peters was quite alone. Mrs Marks was too busy to talk to him. Elsa

did not come back. But the old plane tree did not seem to mind him.

* * * * *

As the years went on Peters found that he got old very quickly. One of

the effects of age, in his case, was a violent pain in the chest, which

came on after any great exertion or if he walked fast uphill. He went

for a holiday--a week at Hunstanton--but it did not seem to do him much

good. But when he came back he heard glorious news. Elsa was coming

again for a few days.

"Now, I'm glad," said Peters. "I always liked the child. Such bright

ways she had! We shall soon be playing cricket together again."

"Why, you forget, Mr Peters," said Mrs Marks. "Elsa's near seventeen

now. Besides, you're too much of an invalid to think of running about.

You've aged." Mrs Marks herself did not age; she was one of those hard,

wiry women that are capable of looking forty for twenty years.

Elsa looked very pretty. She still wore her hair down, but her dresses

were much longer. She had a very superior manner, and did not seem

particularly glad to see Peters. She took one of the liquorice jujubes

that he offered her. But she explained that she did not care about that

sort now; she only liked the best chocolates. "You can't get them here.

If you want to give me anything, Mr Peters, there's a blouse

(two-and-eleven) in Higginson's window that would do me nicely."

He looked a little bewildered, but he bought her the blouse, and it did

her very nicely indeed--so nicely that she thought it was a pity that

she was not to be photographed in it. "We might be photographed

together," she said alluringly; "I shouldn't want more than two

copies--cabinets."

This was better. Peters was pleased that she wanted him to be

photographed with her. The photographer placed her on a rustic stile,

with Peters standing by her side. He smiled widely and with feeling, as

he looked at her. She shook her head impatiently. "Oh, this won't do!"

she said, "your grinning puts me out. Besides, you shake the stile. I

wish you'd stand away and let me be done alone. Then you can have

yourself took afterwards."

So Peters stood away meekly. But on the whole he did not think it worth

while to have himself taken afterwards.

The two copies arrived, and satisfied Elsa. "Though I've known myself

look better," she said. One copy was for herself, and the other she

destined for a particular friend. Peters had bought a plush frame,

supposing that she had intended to give him one copy; well, that did not

matter; he could order a third from the photographer. In the meantime he

was required to pack up the photograph for the particular friend.

"It would travel safer," he said, "if you packed it between a couple of

pieces of card."

Elsa looked thoughtful. "I've got an old bit in my writing-case," she

said. "Go and fetch it, Mr Peters."

He hunted through the writing-case, but could not find it.

"Well, I know it's there, anyhow," she retorted. "I kept it, knowing it

would come in some day. It's got those prayers on it that you wrote out

for me when I was here before."

"Oh, yes, I saw that. I didn't think--"

"Well, never mind, I'll go and get it myself; torn in half, it will just

do. It will puzzle my friend, though--he's not one of the praying sort."

Peters was guilty of looking somewhat despondent as he moved away; this

made Elsa rather angry. "You needn't look so glum," she said; "you

didn't expect me to keep it all my life, and have it buried with

me--silly old card--did you?"

* * * * *

"One thing I will say," Mrs Marks observed, after Elsa had gone, "is

that she does brighten up a house. And I hope her looks mayn't be a

snare to her. She has one young admirer already, and she a mere child!

She's promised to come again next year. I hope you'll get on better with

her then. You seemed more stand-offish this time--you've no complaint

against her?"

"Oh, no! certainly not."

"You're not looking well, Mr Peters. You'll excuse my mentioning it, but

you want a doctor."

Peters shook his head slowly, but owned to a touch of

something--probably liver. It was Sunday evening, and he had been

intending to go to church as usual. But he changed his mind. He did not

feel up to it. He sat under the plane tree and thought about Elsa as she

used to be before she grew up.

He knew that old tree well now, knew every twist of the branches, every

kink of the bark. In an unreasoning way he loved the tree. It had never

repulsed him; it had always been there for him.

Mrs Marks was right. Peters did want a doctor. He took to fainting when

he was at work at the office. He apologised for it to the senior

partner, who had found him unconscious, and promised that it should not

occur again. But it did. One morning he was summoned to the senior

partner's private room. Grantham and Flynders were both there. They told

him that he had been for many years a faithful servant to them, and that

now--when he was past work--they wanted to mark their sense of his

services. He was not to come to the office any more, but they named a

sum which would be paid him by way of pension for the rest of his life.

And they advised him to see a doctor.

Peters could not understand it, and it had to be explained to him again.

Then he tried to thank them. He felt proud and tremulous. He had been

praised--it was years since anybody had praised him. He walked home and

told Mrs Marks about it. He was not to work any more. Grantham &

Flynders had praised him very highly. And he had a pension. And Mrs

Marks congratulated him, and said that he deserved his luck. And finally

Peters broke down and wept.

* * * * *

Peters spent most of his days, doing absolutely nothing, stretched on

the grass under the plane tree. He had grown rather queer in one or two

points. Mrs Marks could not make him believe that the strip of land was

to be built over, and that the tree would have to come down. He did not

argue about it. He merely said, "They shall not cut that tree down. I

shall see about it."

"Now that _is_ silly, Mr Peters. The tree _will_ come down before they

begin to build."

"No, it will not," said Peters.

One day, while Peters was lying under the tree, a party of men came and

took measurements, and cut lines in the turf, but they did not attempt

to touch the tree. Peters chuckled.

But next morning he was awakened by a sound of sawing. A party of

labourers had come early, and were at work on the tree, sawing off the

heavy lower boughs. Peters leant half out of the window in his

night-shirt and shook his fist at them. He was wild with excitement.

"Leave my tree alone!" he screamed.

The men stopped work for a minute. Two of them laughed. One of them

shouted up to him:

"Hold your row, you old fool! It ain't your tree."

"It _is_ mine," cried Peters. "I shall come down to you and stop you.

I'm coming now." Then he fell back on the bed fainting.

Mrs Marks was much alarmed, and--whether Peters liked it or

not--insisted on having a doctor.

When the doctor came downstairs she met him in the passage. "Well, sir?"

she said.

"I can do nothing--might have done if I'd been called in years ago. It's

the heart. He can't last long. Don't let him be excited, and I'll send

you something to give him for these fainting attacks."

Mrs Marks was a hard woman, but she wiped her eyes with her apron. "He's

been here so long, you see," she explained.

* * * * *

Peters protested against the doctor. It was a foolish expense, if he was

certain to die.

"I've got a little put by--yes, that's true. But it's all to go to Elsa,

you see, and I don't want any of it wasted."

The blinds were drawn in order that he might not be excited by seeing

the felling of the tree; but he could hear the work going on, though he

pressed his thin hands to his ears.

As the sun shone in at his window one morning, and he lay awake in bed,

a big, swift shadow swept across the blind, and then came a deafening

crash.

Peters half raised himself in bed, one hand on his heart. His voice came

in a whisper, "My God!"

He sank quite gently back again on the bed, and did not move.

THE NIGHT OF GLORY

It was half-past six at night when she came down from the workrooms and

out into the street. She was an intensely anaemic girl, neatly dressed,

thin, tired. Given better health, she would not have been unattractive;

given a better way of life, she would have had better health.

A gentleman of forty-five crossed the street towards her, raised his

hat, and said, "You're late to-night."

She took absolutely no notice, and slightly quickened in her pace.

"Please do not hurry," he said. "I have so much to say to you." Then she

turned round on him and was very furious. If he bothered her any more

she would hand him over to the police.

"Pray don't misunderstand me," said the gentleman, plaintively; "I would

not insult you or treat you with anything but the greatest respect on

any account."

"Then what on earth do you want?" she said rather irritably.

"I will put it as briefly as I can. I happen to be very wealthy. I can

enjoy nothing--the day for that has gone past for me. I wish for one

night to see somebody else enjoy something. It had to be somebody who

did not usually spend money freely; somebody who worked hard; somebody

who had refinement and education. I thought, and I still think, that I

have found all these things in you. Will you come with me? Dinner, a

theatre or a music-hall, a little supper at the Carlton, and then my

brougham shall drive you home. You will be rendering me the greatest

possible service."

She was a girl that was quite used to taking care of herself. If she had

not much confidence in him, she had great confidence in herself. She

could, at any rate, test it, and abandon the experiment when it pleased

her.

"But," she said, "I have no proper dress for that kind of thing."

"You know what the proper dress would be?"

"Of course I do. It's my business."

"Very well, then, the rest is simple. You will go immediately and get

all that you require in that way--dress, gloves, everything. Do not

think about money, merely exercise the excellent taste which you show in

your present costume. If the dress gives you the least pleasure, I know

that it will give me much more. I shall be your debtor."

"It is like a fairy tale," she said.

"My brougham is here, and at your service."

The electric brougham slid noiselessly up to them. They got in.

In the brougham she watched him nervously, sideways. Yes, he was

forty-five. His dark hair was grey on the temples; there was a

melancholy cruelty in his thin-lipped mouth; but the greenish eyes,

strong and searching, were not the eyes of one who had out-lived

himself.

"I can't understand," she said. "What do you mean? You can't enjoy

anything?"

"Almost that. I am, unfortunately, one who must have novelty. There are

many women to whom I have given pretty toys and suppers at the Carlton.

That--well, that was another affair. This is quite different. To-night I

give for no other motive than to bring enjoyment to you. You see? I

shall enjoy it second-hand. Tell me all about the dress."

She laughed. "Oh! you wouldn't understand if I did. I am going to

Lambert's. One of the ladies there is a great friend of mine. Lucky that

I am stock size, isn't it?"

"Very," said the man, with enthusiasm. He had not the faintest notion

what stock size meant.

When the brougham stopped at Lambert's she seemed a little troubled.

"Half an hour is the least time I can possibly be," she said. "You won't

like waiting."

"Like it? It will be a luxury to me. Nobody has dared to make me wait

for twenty years. You shall do it. Your foot is on my neck. Seriously, I

have one or two little things to do myself. In the meantime"--he handed

her a roll of notes--"get everything you want and pay for it."

She was fully three-quarters of an hour away, but she was a very

transfigured maiden when the commissionaire opened the door of the

brougham for her. Excitement, or a touch of rouge, had put a little

colour into her pale face. Her dark hair was beautiful, and becomingly

dressed. For the rest, all was perfect, from that shapely head down to

the white satin shoes.

"Will this do?" she said eagerly.

"It is superb. You are transformed."

"That's quite true," she said. "I don't seem to myself to be the same

kind of person. I don't think the same way. Oh! please, it didn't take

nearly all that money. Look, I have got it here somewhere." She fumbled

under her cloak.

"Oh! please don't bother," said her companion. "You may want it later

for something or other. See what I have been doing to fill in time."

He took from its box an old ivory fan exquisitely painted, and handed it

to her.

"That fan," he said, "belonged once to a princess, a daughter of George

the Third. She was his favourite daughter, and it was her death which

finally dethroned his reason. Take it; you also are a princess

to-night."

"I cannot thank you--I cannot even begin to thank you. It is like a most

heavenly dream coming true."

"Pray don't speak of thanks. It is I who am indebted to you for being

pleased. I have bought another little toy for you as well."

He opened a case, containing a necklace of pearls, a single row. Not of

great size, but well matched and graduated.

"I am afraid," he said, "that this has no romantic history. The best I

can imagine is that the diver who brought the pearls was snapped in two

by a shark."

"The best?" she cried. "That is the worst! That is horrible! Oh! but

what a lovely necklace!"

"Then," said the man, "he was not snapped in two by a shark. He amassed

great wealth in the pearl fishery business, retired from it, married a

wife, had seventeen children, and was very, very happy."

"Seventeen seems a lot," said the girl.

"To-night you have only to command. The poor man had but two. May I put

the necklace on for you?"

She hesitated. After all, why be a fool? "Of course, if you like," she

said.

He fastened the snap quickly and deftly. "That is the way pearls look

best," he said.

She rubbed her eyes.

"Oh! don't do that," said the man.

She laughed. "I was trying to wake up," she said.

"Don't wake up. But as we now know one another so well shall we say what

our names are?"

"Well, your lordship," said the girl, a little timidly, "my name is

Appleby--Marion Appleby."

"Not 'your lordship'; Lord Alcester, please."

Presently she had recovered from the shock of the introduction, and was

eating iced Cantaloup melon. She looked pleased with the world. She

tasted everything, and drank a very little champagne.

His lordship dined principally on dry toast and old brandy. He was

evidently well known and appreciated in the restaurant.

"Tell me all about yourself," he said to her. "What is your ordinary day

like?"

"That is what I'd like to forget just now," she said. "We live in

Fulham, and it's a big family. Father's a very highly-educated man and

speaks three languages. He is a clerk in a very good position; but

still, you see, there are so many of us, and mamma's health isn't good.

I am up early every morning seeing to the children, and there is my own

work all day, and those workrooms are awful in the summer; then there is

the walk back, or sometimes a 'bus if I am very tired, and after that

there is always something to do about the house before I go to bed."

"Any holidays?"

"Oh! yes. We have our fortnight at the sea every summer. Father says

that is not a luxury but a necessity, and he'd save in almost any way

sooner than give that up. I believe he's right, too; you'd hardly know

me after a fortnight at Margate, if the weather's been good. I get

tanned, but I don't freckle. That's luck, isn't it?"

"It is the luckiest thing in the world. Waiter, I want a box at the

Frivolity to-night; see about it, please. If there is no box to be had I

will not take stalls, I will go somewhere else. And, Miss Appleby, what

do you suppose a day of my life is like?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"It is far harder work than yours, and much duller. Believe me, my

child, there is no toil so hard or so absolutely uninteresting as the

toil that one goes through in order to enjoy one's self. In August, when

I go North for the shooting, I still enjoy a little pleasure--at any

rate, the life there is not too actively disgusting. But the London

season--and I would far sooner die than miss any London season--is, if I

may use the expression, unmitigated hell."

"I think," the girl said, "that I could be happy if I were you."

"Undoubtedly--for six months; not always. This is really the only

pleasant evening that I have spent this summer."

"What made you think of it? Why did you choose me?"

"An all-merciful Providence that did not desire that I should slit my

throat out of sheer boredom made me think of it. I waited, and I saw

the rest of your companions pass out from the shop. Not one of them

would have suited me. Frankly, they are all a little vulgar, and, which

is far worse, a little uninteresting. You, on the other hand, are quite

charming. You possess a fascination peculiar to yourself."

"What is it?" the girl asked breathlessly.

"You are very good, and you have a potentiality of being very bad. If

you had been very bad, with a potentiality of being very good, you would

also have fascinated me. I like potentiality in others, for there is

none in myself. I shall never be any better and I could not be any

worse, and I don't care two straws either way. Let's talk about

something more interesting than myself. What? Oh! the box at the

Frivolity. Very well, shall we go, my child, or would you like to change

your mind and go to something else?"

It was quite late that night when he put her carefully into his

brougham, shook hands with her, refused to hear a word of thanks, and

gave the coachman the address in Fulham to which he was to take her.

* * * * *

Five years had done a good deal. They had nearly, but not quite, killed

Lord Alcester. This winter night, bent, wizened, wrapped in furs, and

leaning heavily on his stick, he crawled slowly along Piccadilly on his

way from one club to another.

An ungloved hand touched his arm, and a hoarse woman's voice said, "Half

a moment, my lord."

He gave her one quick glance from under his heavy eyebrows. Those eyes

were not dead yet.

"It won't do," said Lord Alcester.

The girl laughed bitterly. "I thought you might like to look at your

work," she said. "You were the ruin of me five years ago."

"My good woman," said Lord Alcester. "If I stopped in Piccadilly to talk

to all the women who think I have been the ruin of them, it would stop

the traffic. Let me go, please."

She still clung to his arm. "Just half a moment," she said. "The

work-girl whom you gave a pretty dress to, and a string of pearls, and a

fan that once belonged to a princess. You remember?"

"Good God!" said Lord Alcester. "Where can we talk?"

She laughed again, the same bitter laugh, and surveyed her reflection in

a shop-window.

"Yes," she said, "a box at the Frivolity wouldn't do for me now, would

it? Here, I know of a place, if you'll follow me."

"All right," said Lord Alcester. "Walk slowly."

She led him by side-streets into back-streets. The little public-house

was very quiet, discreet, sinful and unsavoury. She pushed her way

through to a little room behind the bar.

"Now then," she said.

With difficulty Lord Alcester dragged off his heavy fur coat and flung

himself down on the crimson velveteen.

"What a godless hole this is," he said. "What are you going to have?"

"Glass of port," she said promptly.

"You haven't taken to spirits yet?"

"I keep that for the mornings. Shall I ring the bell?"

He nodded. The waiter who entered looked curiously from one to another.

Lord Alcester had a firm, quiet, impressive manner.

"You will bring me," he said, "a bottle of the best port you have and a

small bottle of soda-water. Make up that fire."

"I never said a bottle," said the woman. "Are you going to drink the

rest?"

"I am going to drink the soda-water. Don't talk about that. Sit down by

the fire. Warm your hands and tell me about yourself."

It was not until she had finished her first glass of port that she began

on the subject. "There is no more to say than what I said before," she

said. "You were my ruin."

"I remember that night very distinctly. I never made love to you. I

never tried to kiss you. I never treated you with any less respect than

I would have treated a woman of my own class. What are you talking

about? What is all this nonsense?"

"No nonsense at all. How did you think it would be when I got home that

night with fifty pounds' worth of new clothes, and my pearl necklace,

and a story of a theatre and supper afterwards? Do you think they would

believe my word at home? They said they did; I have got a temper, and

they daren't say anything else; but they let me see very well that they

didn't believe me. I wasn't going to stand it. Next morning at

breakfast, when they were all full of the thing, I gave them some

straight talking, and then I cleared out."

"Am I responsible for the heat of your temper and the straightness of

your talking?"

"You might have guessed how it would be with me. Did you think that

after one night of glory like that I was going back to perpetual

drudgery? I'd seen life as it might be, and I'd been given a bad name.

I'd only got to deserve it."

"How much did you get for the pearl necklace?"

"Three hundred and fifty."

"Then you were swindled."

"I know that, of course. I told them so. What did it matter? It was all

gone in a few weeks. I can tell you I made money fly in those days.

That's all past. I've lost what little good looks I ever had, haven't

I?"

"Quite," said Lord Alcester, mercilessly. "You drink, you see," he

added.

The girl put down her glass and fumbled desperately for a dirty little

handkerchief with her face screwed awry. She dabbed at her eyes and

shook with sobs.

"Stop that," said Lord Alcester. "You are making the devil of a row.

Look here, come to business."

"I might have been good," she moaned. "If I had never met you I might

have been good."

Lord Alcester was writing something on one of his visiting-cards. He

stepped over to her and touched her on the shoulder. "Can you read that

address?" he said.

"Yes," she said between her sobs. "Lincoln's Inn Fields. Solicitors, I

suppose?"

"Quite so," said Lord Alcester, as he struggled back into his coat

again. "They'll give you a pound a week as long as you live. Call for it

on Saturday mornings. I could also give you plenty of good advice, but I

won't. Are you coming?"

She glanced at the decanter by her side. "Not quite yet," she said. "I

think I'll just--"

"Oh! I see," said Lord Alcester, contemptuously. "Good-night, then."

Out in the street he stopped the first hansom that he saw. The man had

often driven him before.

"What will you take," he said to the man, "to drive this cab to eternal

smash? Drive it, for instance, down the Duke of York's steps?"

The cabman smiled patiently. "Which club did you say, my lord?" Lord

Alcester gave the address of his club and got into the cab.

AN IDYLL OF THE SEA

The repellent mid-day meal grew to its untidy close in a frowsy

boarding-house in one of the less-pleasing back streets of

Sefton-on-Sea. Mr Sigismund Porter had eaten so remarkably little that

he might almost have won an approving smile from the hawk-eyed

proprietress. As a rule, Mr Porter was a young man who liked value for

his money, but to-day there was something on his mind, a gloomy

resolution which destroyed his appetite.

"I am going," he said to himself, "to put my cards down on the table. I

am going to own up, and to act on the square, and to be chucked for

doing it, and to leave this blighted place to-morrow."

In his small bedroom at the very top of the house he arrayed himself

with his usual scrupulous care. He wore a pair of the yellowest boots in

Sefton-on-Sea, waistcoat and trousers of grey flannel, a dark blue

smoking-jacket of the reach-me-down or Edgware Road order, and a straw

hat adorned with the bewitching colours of the Advance Guard Cycling

Club. His necktie was of the palest saffron, saving for such stains as

it had acquired by natural wear and tear. He surveyed himself in the

looking-glass and was satisfied.

Considering that he was really rather a nice-looking young man, he was

a pretty bad sight. He had dark, wavy hair, and a girl had once said

that he had the most pathetic eyes in Brixton. He lived at Brixton, and

so did the girl. That was now merely an incident in the dead past.

He selected one of those cigarettes the principal characteristic of

which is that you get an amazing amount of them for threepence. He shut

the case with a snap--a real silver case which gave him pleasure--and so

he went forth jauntily. He was going to his doom, of course, and he knew

that he was going to his doom. But as his way to his doom lay along the

sea-front, it was as well for the present to keep up appearances. From

the sea-front he reached the pier, cast down his penny at the

turnstiles, and walked up to the further end of it to a secluded seat

behind the little pavilion where they let the entertainments loose.

There he waited, leaning forward with his rather weak chin on the handle

of his walking-stick. For a moment the wicked thought flashed across him

that there was no necessity for him to put his cards down on the table,

that he might as well have played the game out to the end. He cast the

temptation from him. He would lose the girl, of course, but there was

the very devil in it. He would rather lose her fairly than leave her

with the glittering but untrue portrait of himself that she must now

possess.

He looked up and saw the girl herself walking towards him.

"Walks like a queen," he said to himself. "Walks as if she'd bought the

whole place, and could pay for it--and she gets thirty bob a week from a

Dover Street milliner. You couldn't hardly believe it." Then he arose

and lifted his absurd hat.

The girl shook hands with him frankly. She was simply and quietly

dressed, but perhaps her profession gave her advantages there.

"Good afternoon, Mr Porter," she said. "You are getting splendid weather

for your last day here." She was a pretty girl with enigmatical eyes,

and her voice was softer and pleasanter than the voice of Mr Sigismund

Porter.

"Yes," said Mr Porter, gloomily, "the weather's a bit of all right, I

suppose, if the weather were everything."

"But the weather is quite a good deal, isn't it?" said the girl,

cheerfully. "You wouldn't enjoy your run on your motor-car up to the

Lakes if it came on wet."

"There ain't going to be any run," said the young man.

"What? But what about your friends--Colonel Raynes and Lord Daybrooke?

You can't disappoint them."

"I shan't," he said bitterly. "They won't be disappointed, because they

don't exist. I haven't got any colonels and lords amongst my friends.

It was all lies and brag. For that matter, I haven't got any friends

except one girl, and she's just going to give me the chuck for taking

her in."

"I see," said the girl, thoughtfully. "Would you mind very much if we

left this disgusting, vulgar little pier and walked along by the sands?

They begin to make music of sorts here directly, and it will be quieter

out of the crowd."

The thought flashed into his mind that it was hardly worth while to pay

a penny for the pier and leave it at the end of five minutes, for his

mind was perforce economical. But money questions at the moment seemed

too sordid.

"All right," he said. "Considering the way I've carried on--I may say

the rotten way I've carried on--it's pretty decent of you to hear the

story out. I suppose I could kick up some sort of an excuse."

"Perhaps I could find the excuses for you," said the girl, as they went

down together on to the beach. "You are not really stopping at the

Grand, then?"

"No, I'm not. I've been stopping at the cheapest and muckiest

boarding-house in the place, and in a mortal funk all the time lest you

should see me going in and out. Well, that's all over, at any rate. You

know the worst now. The way it started was that I wanted to impress you

a bit. I wanted to make myself out one of the lucky ones. I wanted to

seem a superior class to you altogether. And that's the damned funny

thing about it, if you'll excuse my swearing. All the time that I was

bragging about motor-cars, and you were talking about the stuffy

workrooms, you were the superior class to me, and I was the dirt under

your feet. Looking back on it, I can't think how I came to make such a

fool of myself. Your superior, indeed! Why, even on the outside facts

I'm not that, for I only make twenty-eight bob to your thirty, and I

haven't got your chance of a rise."

"I think I see how it all happened," said the girl. "It was all very

natural. I was sorry you told me those fibs, but I was not half as sorry

then as I am glad now when you've taken them back again."

"Hold on," said the man. "I mean, just half a moment, if you don't mind.

You said you were sorry when I began blowing about my position and all

that. You knew, then?"

"Yes," said the girl. "I knew all the time. And all the time I was

rather thinking that you wouldn't go on with it."

The young man stared at her hard. "You beat me altogether," he said. "I

can't make head or tail of it. Of course, you've had opportunities of

picking up style in your work, and there's no manner of doubt that

you've got it. Well, I've known other girls who worked at a milliner's

who have done the same. What beats me is that you've got that way of

thinking. That's where they slip up. They say it all right, but what

they say is all wrong. It's the same here, for the matter of that," he

added gloomily.

"Now I want to talk to you," said the girl. "We are out of the crowd

here. Let's sit down. I've got to apologise to you too, you know. I've

told you lies, too. I never worked for a milliner in my life. I've got a

motor-car and more money than I want, and I am stopping at the very

hotel where you said you were."

"I take it," said the young man, quietly, "that this is about the last

straw. If you'll permit one question, miss, that being the case, why on

earth did you ever let me speak to you?"

"We will both be honest now," said the girl. "I saw you several times,

and always alone. You did not seem to be having a particularly happy

holiday. I saw that you wanted to talk to me. The book that I left on

the seat gave you your chance, but I did not leave my book there on

purpose. I had not even made up my mind at the moment when you brought

it to me what I would do. When you began to talk, I saw that right at

the back of all the talk you were quite a good young man. You always

treated me properly and with respect."

"The man's not been born yet who would dare do anything else."

The girl laughed. "Well, I was inclined to like you. I don't value what

you call the outside facts so very, very much. I rather like doing

something unconventional, if it is not actually wrong. I thought it

would please you if I let you meet me sometimes."

"That's rather a mild way of putting it."

"It pleased me too. At the back of everything that was wrong in you

there were such lots and lots of good. I don't want you to look on it as

simply an idle experiment on my part. Perhaps there was a slight shade

of that in it, and I am rather ashamed of it. But it was chiefly that I

wanted you to have a rather happier time here."

"I believe all that," said Mr Porter, "and I did have a happier time

here. But think how I've got to pay for it afterwards. There's the

contempt you must have felt for me--that's a nice sort of thing to have

in your mind when you can't sleep at night! By God!" he burst out with

sudden ferocity, "you lied worse than I did. You did more harm."

"Now you talk like a man," she said. "But you're mistaken on one point.

There was never any contempt. All the time I was thinking that in your

circumstances I should probably have been sorely tempted to do exactly

as you did. Think of that when you can't sleep."

"That isn't everything," said the young man, jabbing holes in the sand

with his stick.

"Isn't it?" said the girl. "What's the rest?"

"Thanks," said the young man, bitterly, "but I'm not going to make a

fool of myself again. You go and become what you pretended to be. Come

to me as a thirty-bob-a-week girl, working for a milliner, then I'll

tell you the rest fast enough. Now I'm going to say 'Good-bye' to you."

"I think I see," said the girl. "That could never have been in any

circumstances. But because I want you to know that I'm a friend to you,

good-bye." She held out both her hands to him. "And remember this." Then

she put her face up to his and kissed him.

In a moment she was gone.

The young man remained standing there. "And," he said to himself, "one

ought to go straight up to heaven in a chariot of golden fire."

THE MAGIC RINGS

PART I.--NETTA, THE MAKE-BELIEVER

Netta's father one day picked her up, swung her into the air, and put

her down on the top of the high Italian cabinet in the hall. "There, you

little slut," he said, "what does the world look like from up there?"

"Quite different; you wouldn't know it. The pictures look so

queer--upside down; and the staircase isn't the same--or anything. Can't

you come up too?"

"No; I'm afraid."

"Did you know there were two--no, three--big rings up here on the top of

the cabinet? You can't see them from down below. May I bring them down?"

"If you like."

They were three disused wooden curtain rings, very dusty.

"How did they get there?" asked Netta.

"That," said her father, "is one of the things that I do not know; ask

somebody else."

So she asked her mother, her governess, her nurse, and all the servants.

They also did not know. They supposed that somebody must have put them

there some time. Netta went back to her father and obtained permission

to have those rings for her own. She carried them out into the garden

into a secluded place under a weeping ash. There she examined the rings

very carefully, and thought about the mystery which surrounded them.

When she took them upstairs she showed them to her nurse.

"These are the magic rings," she said.

"Are they, indeed, now?" said the nurse, used to being interested,

fictitiously, but at the shortest notice, in anything childish.

On the next day Netta felt the need of a temple. The romance of the

rings was growing rapidly. Invested with a mysterious origin and

properties not yet fully defined, but vaguely magical, they required to

be enshrined in a temple. For one night they had put up with the shelter

of the toy-cupboard. But in view of their character they were now to

have a place apart. Netta went to her father and asked him if he had an

empty box that he could spare.

"Would a cardboard box do?"

"Yes. It ought to be pure white, though."

The pure white cardboard box was found and given to her. This became the

temple. Netta placed the three magic rings in it, and called her

brother, who was a year older than she, and at that time rather a pious

little prig.

"Would you like to see what's in that box, Jimmy?"

"I don't much mind."

"It's a temple, and I don't think I shall let you. I certainly shan't

let _everybody_."

"You ought to let me see, because I'm your brother."

"Well, first of all I must write your name inside the lid. Everyone who

is allowed to see into the temple is going to be written down there.

You're not to look until I've done it." She wrote the name as neatly as

she could with a long new pencil, beautifully pointed. "Now you can

look," she said.

"It isn't anything at all. It's only three old rings."

"Yes, but they're magic rings."

"Pooh! They can't do anything."

"Can't they?" said Netta with immense indifference, as she replaced the

lid. She sat on the table, swinging her slim legs, and hummed

provokingly.

"I _know_ they can't do anything," Jimmy repeated.

Netta looked away from him, up at the flies circling on the white

ceiling. Her eyes grew big and meditative. She continued humming.

"Well," said Jimmy, desperately, "what _can_ they do?"

"Every night when you're in bed and asleep, and when everybody else is

in bed and asleep, they can come out of the temple and run about. They

run up walls and along the roofs of houses. And they can fly, too. They

fly just like--like flies."

"I don't believe it. You're being a liar, and you know where liars go

to. You ought to be punished."

"I'm not being a liar. I might be a make-believer, perhaps, but I shan't

say if I am. Nobody knows where those rings came from. Papa himself

doesn't know."

"I shall go and ask him this minute myself." Jimmy walked firmly to the

door, paused, and added, "And lying is the same as make-believing."

He found his father, and asked him if he knew where those rings that

Netta had came from.

"No," said his father, "I told her I didn't."

Jimmy was disappointed. "Lying and make-believing are the same thing,

aren't they?" he said.

"Not at all the same thing." This was yet another disappointment. Later

in the day Jimmy went to Netta and said that she really ought to give

him one of those rings as he was her brother. She refused. He then asked

if he might look inside the temple at them again. Once more he was

refused.

"It is not a good thing," said Netta, gravely, "to look at them too much

in one day."

"It seems as if I couldn't do anything or have anything, or play at

anything," said Jimmy, gloomily. Netta, being tender-hearted, relented,

and allowed him to look once more.

Netta had girl-friends of her own age. They were Dorothy, and Cecilia

Vane, and Rose Heritage. Netta told them about the magic rings, and they

were all deeply impressed.

A ritual sprang up. Netta was the priestess and Rose Heritage was the

under-priestess. It became necessary always to wave a green leaf slowly

over the temple before opening it. Every morning the magic rings were

taken out and placed for a few minutes in a basin of pure water. Then

they were dried and put back again in the temple. Dorothy Vane, who read

deeply, suggested amulets, and they were made at once. Each girl wore

round her neck a gold thread--it had come off a box of crackers--and to

the thread was attached a small square of white cardboard, on which

three circles had been drawn. Netta and Rose had amulets on which the

circles were drawn in red chalk. Dorothy and Cecilia had to be content

with black ink. But it was understood that after a certain time Dorothy

would be raised to the position of under-priestess, and then she also

would have the red-chalk privilege. The amulets were to be worn under

the dress, and to be shown to no one. The secrecy observed was

tremendous. Nobody was to know anything. When engaged with the magic

rings, Christian names were forbidden. Netta was addressed as the

priestess and Rose as the under-priestess; Dorothy was called One and

Cecilia Two. Of course, Two was the least honourable position. It had

been assigned to Cecilia because, owing to her sweet and gentle

disposition, she consented to take it--which none of the other three

would have done. Jimmy was by unanimous vote left out of it altogether.

They would ask him if he would not go and play in the garden, like a

kind boy, because they had some private secrets to talk about; and if he

came suddenly into the room where they were they hid things hurriedly

and talked ostentatiously about the weather. This maddened Jimmy.

Sometimes he said that he knew all about it, and at other times pointed

out to Netta that the claims of their relationship required that she

should tell him all about it, and at other times that he did not want to

know. Occasionally he threatened to throw the temple and the magic rings

(he called them "old curtain-rings," but that was only his

offensiveness) into the duck-pond. He did not do it. The devotees were

four in number, and he was only one, and foolhardiness is not courage.

"Anyhow," he said, "if you weren't doing wrong, you'd let me into it,

and so you're certain to be punished. I have got secrets of my own and

mine are not wrong, but I shan't say anything about them." But he

prevailed nothing.

The legends about the magic rings grew rapidly in number and in

strength. Their origin was now accounted for. They had been hoops

belonging to the fairies, and they had undergone trundling so willingly

and beautifully that the fairies had set them free and given them

magical powers. This aetiological myth was, like the rest, given out by

big-eyed Netta, the make-believer, and received with wonderment and

satisfaction by her followers. The magic rings always lived a day on

ahead; what is merely Monday to us was Tuesday to them. Reports of their

nocturnal wanderings were received from time to time. They frequently

went to the moon. They could fly like flies, it will be remembered. Once

they went to the Star of Dolls. This star is inhabited by dolls only,

and they can talk. A penny exercise book was procured (the generous and

sweet-tempered Cecilia defraying the total expense), and in it the myths

were written out, together with certain rules to be observed. It was

called the "Volume of the Magic Rings," and the under-priestess had

charge of it just as the priestess had charge of the temple. Letters

passed freely between the four girls. I give the one which was the

beginning of the end:

"DEAREST PRIESTESS,--When you bring the temple with you to tea on

their Thursday wich is our Wensday, mind to bring two handkercheeves,

and one of them must be clean. This is important. I have something to

show you. I hope you tell Jimy nothing.--Your loving

"UNDER-PRIESTESS."

The other girls had received similar instructions. Cecilia had been told

to bring her musical-box as well. They all met in Rose's schoolroom, and

at first she did not explain her instructions fully.

"I've got a splendid thing," she said. "First of all, when I say 'Go,'

you must all run after me at once, bringing the things with you, and

then when we get there I'll tell you the rest."

Rose's governess was with them at tea, but afterwards she made ready to

go out into the garden, suggesting that they should come too.

"May we wait a little and then come?" asked Rose. "We want to play in

the house first."

"Very well," said Miss Stagg. "Don't get into any mischief."

The moment she had gone Rose said "Go!" In single file, with Rose

leading, they ran down a long passage and into the spare bedroom at the

end of it.

"Now, then," said Rose, "first of all, we tie clean white handkerchiefs

on our heads." It was done. "Now, come and look."

In the spare room there was a very large toilet-table. It was hung all

round with pink chintz with thin white muslin over it. When you got

under the table the world was shut out by these curtains, and the light

came through them in a holy, pink, subdued glow. It was a charming and

secluded spot, and here Miss Rose had placed all ready two small

coloured candles and a box of matches, and the lid of a box piled high

with rose petals, and the green leaf essential to the opening of the

temple. All agreed that it really was as splendid as she had said. A

conference was held, and the ritual decided. The candles were lighted,

and placed one on each side of the temple. The green leaf was waved, the

temple opened, and the magic rings taken out. At this point the

musical-box was to begin to play. The Priestess had assigned the turning

of the musical-box to Two, because, after all, it was her own

musical-box, and she had so few privileges. So Two was radiant. The

magic rings were to be covered over with the rose petals, left there

until the music ceased, and then replaced in the temple. Then everybody

was to say, "O magic rings!" three times, and the candles were to be

extinguished. The programme was never concluded, because, in the middle

of it, Rose's governess, Miss Stagg, came and caught them.

It was Miss Stagg's opinion that they were very naughty, wicked,

irreverent children, and that they ran a risk of burning the house down.

The first accusation was untrue, but the latter had something in it.

The four children wandered out into the garden, a dejected group.

Cecilia was the only one who had actually cried though, and they had all

comforted her as well as they could.

"I do hate Miss Stagg," said Rose. "This is the end of the magic rings."

Netta, the make-believer, rose to the occasion with a new myth.

"The magic rings have been insulted. They do not like that. I don't like

being insulted myself, and if it had been _my_ governess I should have

answered back. Well, I know what the magic rings will do now."

"What?"--breathlessly, from all.

"They will go away. To-night I shall put them in their temple in their

usual place. But to-morrow all of you come in the morning after lessons,

and you'll see--they'll be gone! They will go right away by themselves,

perhaps to the moon and perhaps to the Star of Dolls."

Miss Stagg thought it her duty to inform Mrs Heritage, who heard the

story gravely, and thanked her, but repeated it brilliantly, amid a good

deal of merriment, to the make-believer's father, when she dined at his

house that night.

"Ah!" he said, "I must manage a mysterious disappearance for those

rings."

When next morning Netta and her companions opened the temple the rings

were not there, but in their place was a slip of paper, on which the

word "Good-bye" was written. Not one of the four was more astonished

than Netta herself. "It's really happened. I wasn't _sure_ it would, you

know."

"I shall tell Miss Stagg," said Rose, triumphantly.

"I wonder if we really were wicked," said Cecilia, with a troubled look

in her angel-eyes. "I didn't mean to be."

They never solved the mystery; gradually they forgot it.