you thinking of taking me in some different style? I am quite at your
disposition.'
He brought out a small but stout property-mast, and arranged it against
a canvas background of coast scenery. 'I generally use it for children
in sailor costume,' he said, 'but I _think_ it will bear your weight
long enough for the purpose.'
I wiped my brow. 'You are not going to ask me to climb that thing?' I
faltered.
'Well,' he suggested, 'if you will just arrange yourself upon the
cross-trees in a negligent attitude, upside down, with your tongue
protruded as if for medical inspection, I shall be perfectly satisfied.'
I tried argument. 'I should have no objection in the world,' I said;
'it's an excellent idea--only, _do_ sailors ever climb masts in that
way? Wouldn't it be better to have the thing correct while we're about
it?'
'I was not aware that you were a sailor,' he said; '_are_ you?'
I was afraid to say I was, because I apprehended that, if I did, it
might occur to him to put me through some still more frightful
performance.
'Come,' he said, 'you won't compel me to shed blood so early in the
afternoon, will you? Up with you.'
I got up, but, as I hung there, I tried to obtain a modification of
some of the details. 'I don't think,' I said artfully, 'that I'll put
out my tongue--it's rather overdone, eh? _Everybody_ is taken with his
tongue out nowadays.'
'It is true,' he said, 'but I am not well enough known in the profession
yet to depart entirely from the conventional. Your tongue out as far as
it will go, please.'
'I shall have a rush of blood to the head, I know I shall,' I protested.
'Look here,' he said; 'am I taking this photograph, or are you?'
There was no possible doubt, unfortunately, as to who was taking the
photograph. I made one last remonstrance. 'I put it to you as a sensible
man,' I began; but it is a waste of time to put anything to a raving
lunatic as a sensible man. It is enough to say that he carried his
point.
'I wish you could see the negative!' he said as he came back from his
laboratory. 'You were a little red in the face, but it will come out
black, so it's all right. That carte will be quite a novelty, I flatter
myself.'
I groaned. However, this was the end; I would get away now at all
hazards, and tell the police that there was a dangerous maniac at large.
I got down from the mast with affected briskness. 'Well,' I said, 'I
mustn't take advantage of your good nature any longer. I'm exceedingly
obliged to you for the--the pains you have taken. You will send _all_
the photographs to this address, please?'
'Don't go yet,' he said. 'Are you an equestrian, by the way?'
If I could only engage him in conversation I felt comparatively secure.
'Oh, I put in an appearance in the Row sometimes, in the season,' I
replied; 'and, while I think of it,' I added, with what I thought at the
time was an inspiration, 'if you will come with me now, I'll show you my
horse--you might take me on horseback, eh?' I did not possess any such
animal, but I wanted to have that door unlocked.
'Take you on horseback?' he repeated. 'That's a good idea--I had rather
thought of that myself.'
'Then come along and bring your instrument,' I said, 'and you can take
me at the stables; they're close by.'
'No need for that,' he replied cheerfully. 'I'll find you a mount here.'
And the wretched lunatic went behind the screen and wheeled out a small
wooden quadruped covered with large round spots!
'She's a strawberry roan,' he said; 'observe the strawberries. So, my
beauty, quiet, then! Now settle yourself easily in the saddle, as if you
were in the Row, with your face to the tail.'
'Listen to me for one moment,' I entreated tremulously. 'I assure you
that I am not in the habit of appearing in Rotten Row on a spotted
wooden horse, nor does any one, I assure you--_any_ one mount a horse of
any description with his face towards the crupper! If you take me like
that, you will betray your ignorance--you will be laughed at!'
When people tell you it is possible to hoodwink the insane by any
specious show of argument, don't believe them; my own experience is that
demented persons can be quite perversely logical when it suits their
purpose.
'Pardon me,' he said, '_you_ will be laughed at possibly--not I. I
cannot be held responsible for the caprices of my clients. Mount,
please; she'll carry you perfectly.'
'I will,' I said, 'if you'll give me the revolver to hold. I--I should
like to be done with a revolver.'
'I shall be delighted to do you with a revolver,' he said grimly, 'but
not yet; and if I lent you the weapon now, I could not answer for your
being able to hold the horse as well--she has never been broken in to
firearms. _I'll_ hold the revolver. One--two--three.'
I mounted; why had I not disregarded the expense and gone to Lenz and
Kamerer? Lenz does not pose his customers by the aid of a revolver.
Kamerer, I was sure, would not put his patrons through these degrading
tomfooleries.
He took more trouble over this than any of the others; I was
photographed from the back, in front, and in profile; and if I escaped
being made to appear abjectly ridiculous, it can only be owing to the
tragic earnestness which the consciousness of my awful situation lent to
my expression.
As he took the last I rolled off the horse, completely prostrated. 'I
think,' I gasped faintly, 'I would rather be shot at once--_without_
waiting to be taken in any other positions. I really am not equal to any
more of this!' (He was quite capable, I felt, of photographing me in a
perambulator, if it once occurred to him!)
'Compose yourself,' he said soothingly, 'I have obtained all I wanted. I
shall not detain you much longer. Your life, I may remark, was never in
any imminent danger, as this revolver is unloaded. I have now only to
thank you for the readiness with which you have afforded me your
co-operation, and to assure you that early copies of each of the
photographs shall be forwarded for Miss Waverley's inspection.'
'Miss Waverley!' I exclaimed; 'stay, how do _you_ know that name?'
'If I mistake not, it was her photograph that you kindly brought for my
guidance. I ought to have mentioned, perhaps, that I once had the honour
of being engaged to her--until you (no doubt from the highest motives)
invested my little gift of song with a flavour of unromantic ridicule.
That ridicule I am now enabled to repay, with interest calculated up to
the present date.'
'So you are Iris's poet!' I burst out, for, somehow, I had not
completely identified him till that moment. 'You scoundrel! do you think
I shall allow you to circulate those atrocious caricatures with
impunity? No, by heavens! my solicitor shall----'
'I rely upon the document you were kind enough to furnish,' he said
quietly. 'I fear that any legal proceedings you may resort to will
hardly avert the publicity you seem to fear. Allow me to unfasten the
door. Good-bye; mind the step on the first landing. Might I beg you to
recommend me amongst your friends?'
I went out without another word; he was mad, of course, or he would not
have devised so outrageous a revenge for a fancied injury, but he was
cunning enough to be my match. I knew too well that if I took any legal
measures, he would contrive to shift the whole burden of lunacy upon
_me_. I dared not court an inquiry for many reasons, and so I was
compelled to pass over this unparalleled outrage in silence.
Iris made frequent inquiries after the promised photograph, and I had to
parry them as well as I could--which was a mistake in judgment on my
part, for one afternoon while I was actually sitting with her, a packet
arrived addressed to Miss Waverley.
I did not suspect what it might contain until it was too late. She
recognised that photographs were inside the wrappings, which she tore
open with a cry of rapture--and then!
She had a short fainting fit when she saw the Gainsborough hat, and as
soon as she revived, the extraordinary appearance I presented upside
down on the mast sent her into violent hysterics. By the time she was in
a condition to look at the equestrian portraits she had grown cold and
hard as marble. 'Go,' she said, indicating the door, 'I see I have been
wasting my affection upon a vulgar and heartless buffoon!'
I went--for she would listen to no explanations; and indeed I doubt
whether, even were she to come upon this statement, it would serve to
restore my tarnished ideal in her estimation. But, though I have lost
her, I am naturally anxious (as I said when I began) that the public
should not be misled into drawing harsh conclusions from what, if left
unexplained, may doubtless have a singular appearance.
It is true that, up to the present, I have not been able to learn that
any of those fatal portraits have absolutely been exposed for sale,
though I direct my trembling steps almost every day to Regent Street,
and search the windows of the Stereoscopic Company with furtive and
foreboding eyes, dreading to be confronted with presentments of
myself--Bedell Gruncher, 'Vitriol,' the great critic!--lying across a
chair in a state of collapse, sucking my thumb in a Gainsborough hat,
or bestriding a ridiculous wooden horse with my face towards its tail!
But they cannot be long in coming out now; and my one hope is that these
lines may appear in print in time to forestall the prejudice and scandal
which are otherwise inevitable. At all events, now that the world is in
possession of the real facts, I am entitled to hope that the treatment
to which I have been subjected will excite the indignation and sympathy
it deserves.
_PALEFACE AND REDSKIN_
A COMEDY-STORY FOR GIRLS AND BOYS
ACT THE FIRST
WHERE IS THE ENEMY?
It was a very hot afternoon, and Hazel, Hilary, and Cecily Jolliffe were
sitting under the big cedar on the lawn at The Gables. Each had her
racket by her side, and the tennis-court lay, smooth and inviting, close
by; but they did not seem inclined to play just then, and there was
something in the expression of all three which indicated a common
grievance.
'Well,' said Hazel, the eldest, who was nearly fourteen, 'we need not
have excited ourselves about the boys' holidays, if we had only known.
They don't give us much of their society--why, we haven't had one single
game of cricket together yet!'
'And then to have the impudence to tell us that they didn't care much
about _our_ sort of cricket!' said Hilary, 'when I can throw up every
bit as far as Jack, and it takes Guy three overs to bowl me! It's
beastly cheek of them.'
'_Hilary!_' cried Cecily, 'what would mother say if she heard you talk
like that?'
'Oh, it's the holidays!' said Hilary, lazily. 'Besides, it is a shame!
They would have played with us just as they used to, if it hadn't been
for that Clarence Tinling.'
'Yes,' Hazel agreed, 'he hates cricket. I do believe that's the reason
why he invented this silly army, and talked Jack and Guy into giving up
everything for it.'
'They haven't any will of their own, poor things!' said Hilary.
'You forget, Hilary,' put in Cecily, 'Tinling is the guest. They ought
to give way to him.'
'Well,' said Hilary, 'it's ridiculous for great boys who have been two
terms at school to go marching about with swords and guns. Big babies!'
Perhaps there was a little personal feeling at the bottom of this, for
she had offered herself for enlistment, and had been sternly rejected on
the ground of her sex.
'I wish he would go, I know that,' said Hazel, making a rather vicious
little chop at her shoe with her racket; 'those boys talk about nothing
but their stupid army from morning to night. Uncle Lambert says they
make him feel quite gunpowdery at lunch. And what do you think is the
last thing they've done?--put up a great fence all round their tent, and
shut themselves up there all day!'
'Except when they're sentries and hide,' put in Hilary; 'they're always
jumping up somewhere and wanting you to give the countersign. It isn't
like home, these holidays!'
'Perhaps,' suggested Cecily, 'it makes things safer, you know.'
'Duffer, Cis!' cried Hilary, contemptuously, for Cecily had appointed
herself professional peacemaker to the family, and her efforts were
about as successful as such domestic offices ever are.
'Look out!' cried Hilary, presently; 'they're coming. Don't let's take
the least notice of them. They hate that more than anything.'
From the shrubbery filed three boys, the first and tallest of whom wore
an imposing dragoon's helmet with a crimson plume, and carried a
sabretache and crossbelts, and wore red caps like those of the French
army; they carried guns on their shoulders.
'Halt! 'Tention! Dis-miss!' shouted the commanding officer, and the army
broke off with admirable precision.
'Don't be alarmed,' said the General considerately to the three girls;
'the army is only out on fatigue duty.'
'Then wouldn't the army like to sit down?' suggested Hilary, forgetting
all about her recent proposal.
'Ah, you don't understand,' said General Tinling with some pity. 'It's
a military term.'
He was a pale, puffy boy, with reddish hair and freckles, who was
evidently fully alive to the dignity of his position.
'Suppose we let military things alone for a little while,' said Hazel.
'We want the army to come and play tennis. You will, won't you, Jack and
Guy? and Cis will umpire--she likes it.'
'I don't mind a game,' said Jack.
'I'll play, if you like,' added Guy; but he had forgotten that the
General was a bit of a martinet.
'That's nice discipline,' he said. 'I don't know whether you know it;
but in some armies you'd be court-martialled for less than that.'
'Well, may we, then?' asked Guy a little impatiently.
'No salute now!' cried his superior. 'I shall never make you fellows
smart. Why, at the Haversacks, last Easter, there were half a dozen of
us, and we drilled like machines. Of course you mayn't play tennis--this
is only a bivouac; and it's over now. Attention! The left wing of the
force will occupy the shrubbery; the right will push on and blow up the
gate.
'Which of us is the left wing?' inquired Guy.
'You are, of course.'
'Oh, all right; only you said Jack was just now,' grumbled Guy, who was
evidently a little disposed to rebel at being deprived of his tennis.
'Look here,' said the General; 'either let's do the thing thoroughly, or
not do it at all. It's no pleasure to _me_ to be General, I can tell
you; and if I can't have perfect discipline in the ranks--why, we might
as well drop the army altogether!'
'Oh, all right,' said Jack, who was a sweet-tempered boy, 'we won't do
it again.'
And they went off to carry out their separate instructions, Clarence
Tinling remaining by the cedar.
'I have to be a little sharp now and then,' he explained. 'Why, if I
didn't keep an iron rule over them, they'd be getting insubordinate in
no time. You mustn't think I've any objection to their playing tennis,
or anything of that sort; only discipline must be kept up; though it
seems severe, perhaps, to you.'
'It doesn't seem to be half bad fun for _you_, at all events,' said
Hazel.
'Of course,' added Hilary, whose cheeks were flushed and eyes
suspiciously bright as she plucked all the blades of grass that were
within her reach, 'we're glad if you're enjoying being here; but it's a
little slow for us girls. You might give the army a half-holiday now and
then.'
'An army, especially a small army, like ours,' said Clarence, grandly,
'ought to be constantly prepared for action; else it's no use. Then,
look at the protection it is. Why, we've just built a fortified place
close to the kitchen garden, where you could all retire to if we were
attacked; and, properly provisioned, we could hold out for almost any
time.'
'Thank you,' said Hilary. 'I should feel a good deal safer in the
box-room. And then, who's going to attack us?'
'Well, you never know,' replied Clarence; 'but, if they did come, it's
something to feel we should be able to defend ourselves.'
'Yes, Hilary,' Cecily remarked, 'an army would certainly be a great
convenience then.'
'That would depend on what it did,' said her sister. 'It wouldn't be
much of a convenience if it ran away.'
'I don't think Jack and Guy would ever do that,' observed Hazel.
'I suppose that means that you think I should?' inquired Clarence, who
was quick at discovering personal allusions.
'I wasn't thinking about you at all,' said Hazel, with supreme
indifference; 'we don't know you well enough to say whether you're brave
or not--we do know our brothers.'
'There wouldn't be much sense in my being the General if I wasn't the
bravest, would there?' he demanded.
'Well, as to that, you see,' retorted Hilary, 'we don't see much sense
in any of it.'
'Girls can't be expected to see sense in anything,' he said sulkily.
'At all events, no one can be expected to see bravery till there's some
danger,' said Hazel; 'and there isn't the least!'
'That's all you know about it; but I've something more important to do
than stay here squabbling. I'm off to see what the army's up to.' And he
marched off with great pomp.
When he had disappeared, Hilary remarked frankly, 'Isn't he a pig?'
'I don't think it's nice to call our visitors "pigs," Hilary!'
remonstrated Cecily, 'and he's not really more greedy than most boys.'
'Don't lecture, Cis. I didn't mean he was that kind of pig--I said he
was a pig. And he is!' said Hilary, not over lucidly. 'I wonder what
Jack and Guy can see in him. I thought that when they wrote asking him
to be invited, that he'd be sure to be such a jolly boy!'
'He may be a jolly boy--at school,' was all that even the tolerant
Cecily could find to urge in his favour.
'I believe,' said Hazel, 'that they're not nearly so mad about him as
they were--didn't you notice about the tennis just now?'
'He bullies them--that's what it is,' explained Hilary; 'only with
talking, I mean, of course, but he talks such a lot, and he will have
his own way, and, if they say anything, he reminds them he's a visitor,
and ought to be humoured. I wish it was any use getting Uncle Lambert to
speak to him--but he's so stupid!'
'Is he, though?' said a lazy voice from behind the cedar.
'Oh, Uncle Lambkin!' cried Hilary, 'I didn't know you were there!'
'Don't apologise,' was the answer. 'I know it must be a trial to have an
uncle on the verge of imbecility--but bear with me. I am at least
harmless.'
'Of course we know you're really rather clever,' said Hazel, 'but you
_are_ stupid about some things--you never interfere, whatever people
do!'
'Don't I, really?' said their uncle, as he disposed himself on his back,
and tilted his hat over his nose; 'you do surprise me! What a mistake
for a man to make, who has come down for perfect quiet! Whom shall I
begin to interfere with?'
'Well, you might snub that horrid Tinling boy, instead of encouraging
him, as you always do!'
'Encourage him! He's got a fine flow of martial enthusiasm, and a good
supply of military terms, and I listen when he gives me long accounts of
thrilling engagements, when he came out uncommonly strong--and the
enemy, so far as I can gather, never came out at all. I'm passive,
because I can't help myself; and then he amuses me in his way--that's
all.'
'Do you believe he's brave, uncle?'
'I only know that I saw him kill two wasps with his teaspoon,' was the
reply. 'They don't award the Victoria Cross for it--but it's a thing I
couldn't have done myself.'
'I should hope not!' exclaimed Hilary; 'but everybody knows you're a
coward,' she added (she did not intend this remark to be taken
seriously), 'and you're awfully lazy. Still, there are some things you
might do!'
'If that means fielding long-leg till tea-time, I respectfully disagree.
Irreverent girls, have you never been taught that a digesting uncle is a
very solemn and sacred thing?'
'Now you are going to be idiotic again! But as to cricket--why, you must
know that we never get a game now! And next summer I shall be too old to
play!'
'I _never_ mean to be too old for cricket,' said Hilary, with
conviction; 'but we've had none for weeks, uncle, positive weeks!'
'Quite right, too!' observed Uncle Lambert, sleepily. 'Not a game for
girls--only spoil your hands--do you think I want a set of nieces with
paws like so many glovers' signs?'
'That's utter nonsense,' said Hazel, calmly, 'because we always play in
gloves. Mother makes us. At least, when we did play. Now the boys will
only play soldiers, and, if they do happen to be inclined for a set at
tennis, Clarence comes up and orders them off as pickets or outposts, or
something!'
'But he's not Bismarck or Boulanger, is he? I always understood this was
a free country.'
'You know what Guy and Jack are--they can't bear their visitor to think
he isn't welcome.'
'Well, they seem to have made him feel very much at home--but it isn't
my business; if they choose to declare the house in a state of siege,
and turn the garden into a seat of war, I can't help it--I'd rather they
wouldn't, but it's your mother's affair, not mine!'
And he closed the discussion by lighting a cigarette, and relapsing into
a contented silence.
Uncle Lambert was short and stout, with a round red face, a heavy auburn
moustache, and little green eyes which never seemed to notice anything.
His nieces were fond of him, though they often wished he would pay them
the occasional compliment of talking sensibly; but he never did, and he
spent all his time at The Gables in elaborately doing nothing at all.
Clarence Tinling had gone off in a decided huff--so much so indeed that
he left his devoted army to carry out their rather misty manoeuvres
without any help from him. He was beginning to find a falling-off in
their docility of late, which was no doubt owing to their sisters; it
was excessively annoying to him that those girls should be so difficult
to convince of the protective value of a fortress, and especially that
they should decline to take his own superior nerve and courage for
granted. And the worst of it was, nothing but some imminent danger was
ever likely to convince them, such were their prejudice and
narrow-mindedness.
Later that afternoon the family assembled for tea in the cool, shady
dining-room; Mrs. Jolliffe, with a gentle anxiety on her usually placid
face, sat at the head (Colonel Jolliffe was away shooting in the North
just then). 'Where are all the boys?' she said, looking round the table.
'Why don't they come in?'
'It's no use asking us, mother,' said Hilary, 'we see so very little of
them ever.'
'Very likely they are washing their hands,' said her mother.
'So _like_ them!' murmured Uncle Lambert in confidence to his tea-cake.
'But here's the noble General, at all events. Well, Field Marshal, what
have you done with the Standing Army?'
Tinling addressed himself to his hostess. 'Oh, Mrs. Jolliffe, I'm so
sorry I was late, but I had just to run round to the stables for a
minute. Oh, the other two? They're on duty--they're guarding the camp.
In fact, I can't stay here very long myself.'
'But the poor dear boys must have their tea!' cried Mrs. Jolliffe.
'Well, you know,' said their veteran officer, as he helped himself to
the marmalade, 'I don't think a little roughing it is at all a bad
thing for them--teaches them that a soldier's life is not all jam.'
'No,' said Hazel, 'the General seems to get most of that.'
All Clarence said was: 'I'll trouble one of you girls for the tea-cake.'
'I don't think it's fair that the poor army should "rough," as you call
it, while you stuff, Clarence,' said Hazel, indignantly. 'Mustn't they
come in to tea, mother? It is such nonsense!'
'Yes, dear, run and call them in,' said Mrs. Jolliffe. 'I can't let my
boys go without their meals, Clarence, it's so bad for them.'
'It's not discipline,' said the chief; 'still, if they must come, you
had better take them this permit from me.' And he scribbled a line on a
scrap of paper, which he handed to Hazel, who received it with the
utmost disdain.
Hazel crossed the lawn and over a little rustic bridge to the kitchen
garden and hothouses, beyond which was the paddock, where the fortress
had been erected. It was a very imposing construction, built, with some
help from the village carpenter, of portions of some disused fencing.
The stockade had loopholes in it, and above the top she could see a
fluttering flag and the point of a tent. Jack was perched up on a kind
of look-out, and Guy was pacing solemnly before the covered entrance
with a musket of very mild aspect over his shoulder.