I must confess that the idea appealed to Leila more strongly than it
did to me. I do not deny that it struck me as original. But it does
not follow that because an idea is original it is of much practical
value. Leila thought that it was just the thing which was wanted to
calm her condition of nervous disquietude. So, of course, I said
nothing.
At that time we were living at The Larches, and had only just
discovered what a striking difference there is in a house, which is
nine miles away from anywhere, in the summer and in the winter. In the
summer the place was a perfect paradise. The house was embowered in
trees. Within a stone's-throw was a little stream, which murmured as
it meandered, singing, as it were, songs of Arcady. But as the nights
grew longer, and the mornings further off, it was even painful to
observe what a different aspect The Larches began to wear. The winds
howled through the leafless corpses of the trees like souls in agony.
The stream rose till it flooded all the neighbourhood. During the long
evenings the feeling of solitude was really most depressing. As Leila
justly remarked, if anything happened in the dead of the night, and we
were in need of assistance, where should we be? The nearest doctor was
thirteen miles off. A policeman seven. The only servants we could
induce to stay with us were an old woman, who was so old that she had
to choose between us and the workhouse, and a young girl who had come
to us out of the workhouse, and who was undoubtedly meditating
returning whence she came. She said that it was livelier at the
workhouse than at The Larches. Of that, personally, I have not the
slightest doubt.
One day in November I was reading a paper. We did get a paper, now and
then, though I trust that not many people have realised what it means
to drive, in English November weather, in an open basket-carriage,
perhaps eighteen miles to get one. In this paper a paragraph caught my
eye, which was headed, "A Burglar Alarm." I read it. The idea of the
thing was this. You were to cover the hall, and the stairs, and the
banisters, and any other place where anybody was likely to tread, with
open newspapers. Then, if a burglar came into the house in the middle
of the night, he would step on the newspapers, and you would hear them
rustle, and would know that he was there. The idea rather struck me. I
mentioned it to Leila. Indeed, I read the paragraph to her there and
then. She was quite ecstatic.
"We'll try it to-night," she said.
I did not see the exact _sequitur_. Nor why we should lay traps for
burglars because paragraphs appeared in papers. I told her so.
"If a burglar did break in, where should we be?" she asked.
That was her favourite form of inquiry. I really could not tell her,
though I strongly suspected that I, for one, should be in bed. Nor did
I see how, in that respect, the situation would be altered, although
the house was covered with newspapers, both within and without.
"My dear Frederic, how dense you are! Don't you understand that we
should at least know that the man was there, and that would be some
relief at any rate."
I was not so sure of this myself, although I did not care to interrupt
her flow of eloquence to tell her so.
"I'll hunt up all the newspapers I can find, and, to-night, we'll
cover the stairs."
We did. Leila is of a sanguine temperament. When she has made up her
mind on a subject I generally acquiesce. I acquiesced then.
Shortly before nine, which hour, as a rule, was our bedtime at The
Larches, except on those occasions when we retired earlier, we
commenced our operations.
We endeavoured to enlist the servants' sympathy and assistance; but
Mrs. Perkins evidently regarded the whole affair as savouring of
lunacy, and Eliza did nothing else but giggle. So Leila and I had,
practically, to do it all. I think that we made a very fair job of it,
on the whole. We laid between a dozen and twenty newspapers down in
the hall. We covered the stairs.
By the way, it was only after we had covered the stairs that we
discovered that it would be difficult, not to say impossible, for
anyone to ascend them without disarranging all that we had done; so as
we ourselves, and Mrs. Perkins and Eliza were all below, the stairs
had to be done over again. The servants went up first. We followed.
And, as we followed, we covered the treads with the papers as we went.
We even hung newspapers over the banisters, so that if a burglar,
alarmed at the noise which he found he made by stepping on the stairs,
caught hold of the banisters, he would not find that there was safety
there.
I rather fancy that the preparations which we had made for an enemy
who might or might not come acted on our own nervous systems.
Anyhow, hardly had we got into our bedroom and locked the door, than
there came a noise as if all the newspapers we had just laid down were
being stepped upon at once. And not only stepped but jumped on. Leila
was immediately in an almost painful state of agitation. I, of course,
was not so much affected. Still, I own that, even to me, the thing
seemed curious.
"Did you lock the door?" she gasped.
"Certainly. Didn't you see me lock it?"
"Don't let him come in!"
"Don't let who come in, my dear?"
Leila did not say. She stood listening, trembling like a leaf. All was
still.
"Frederic, who can it be?"
"I think, my dear, that perhaps I had better go and inquire."
Scarcely had I spoken than there came the noise again. This time it
was louder than before, and more prolonged. Leila threw her arms about
my neck. She was almost in hysterics.
"Frederic, it's a burglar!"
I did not see very well how it could be. If it was, then the fellow
must have been secreted in the house. He must have watched us to our
bedrooms, and then have instantaneously taken advantage of the fact of
our backs being turned to indulge in acrobatic performances which were
scarcely in accordance with received burglarious traditions.
"Nonsense, my dear, it is nothing of the kind."
As a matter of fact, it was not. It was the cat. Or rather, to be
quite accurate, the kitten. Our cat, whose name, although the animal
was of the feminine persuasion, was Simon, had recently had an
addition to her family. In fact, five additions. Four of them, within
a very short time of their birth, had passed from life--and into a
pail of water. One of them remained alive. I really cannot say why. I
imagine that a white eye had something to do with the matter. The
small creature was like a lump of soot, except about the region of one
eye. There it was as white as the driven, or the undriven--I don't
know which it is, but I know it is one or the other--snow. Leila had
announced that the creature was to be named Macgregor. I can only
repeat that, again, I cannot say why. Leila has a somewhat peculiar
habit of naming, or, perhaps, it would be more correct to write,
misnaming, the animals which come into her possession. She called the
pony we had at The Larches the Duke of Liverpool. She said she did so
because there was not a Duke of Liverpool. That seemed to me an
insufficient reason why the title should have been conferred upon a
spavined, ill-groomed little brute, with a nasty temper, and only
three sound legs to move, or, as was more frequently the case, to
stand upon.
It seems that Macgregor had mistaken us. He seems to have supposed
that Leila and I had occupied the better part of an hour, and taken
the stiffening out of our backs, in order to provide him with a novel
form of amusement, by means of which he might while away, to his own
satisfaction, the witching hours of the stilly night. It appears, too,
that Simon, his masculinely-named female parent, had shared in his
delusion. At any rate, when Leila was beginning to think that all the
burglars in England were dancing breakdowns on those newspapers, and I
went out to see what really was the matter, with a revolver which was
not loaded, and which never had been loaded, in one hand, and a
hairbrush in the other, I found Macgregor dashing up and down the
stairs in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment, while his wretched parent,
forgetting the respect which she owed to herself, and the example
which she owed to him, was rushing and raging after him. I threw the
revolver at Simon and the hairbrush at Macgregor.
Of course Macgregor had to be captured. Also Simon, his mother. It was
absurd to suppose that we had covered the house from the top to the
bottom with newspapers in order that these two animals might render
life not worth the living. But Macgregor was not easy to catch. Leila
and I had to hunt him single-handed; though, perhaps, double-handed
would have been the better expression. We endeavoured to summon the
servants to our assistance. But Mrs. Perkins, who was more than a
little deaf when wide awake, was stone deaf when fast asleep. We never
entertained any hopes of being able to make her hear. Our idea was to
rouse Eliza, then to induce Eliza to prod Mrs. Perkins with her elbow
in the side, and so to establish a chain of communication.
However, directly we began to rap at the bedroom door, Eliza seemed to
be developing strong symptoms of hysterics, apparently under the
impression that we were burglars. So, since the girl was always more
or less of an idiot, and we thought it would, perhaps, not be worth
our while to send her into fits, we resolved, as has been said, to
hunt Macgregor single-handed.
A kitten is a lively animal. One has an object-lesson on this
interesting fact in natural history, when, with the aid of a single
candle, two persons endeavour to catch a kitten in a large, rambling,
old-fashioned house in the darkness of the night. We almost had
Macgregor several times. Never quite. We followed him all over the
house with untiring and, one might almost write, increasing zeal. Up
the stairs and down the stairs. Then up again, then down again. I
doubt if, in his short life, Macgregor had ever enjoyed himself so
much before. For my part I vowed that never again should a _lusus
naturæ_, in the shape of a white eye, keep a kitten out of a pail.
Finally, in the back kitchen, while making a frenzied dash at him, I
missed Macgregor, and knocked the candle over. In endeavouring to
save it I cannoned into Leila. I had not previously been aware that
she was in my near neighbourhood. With such force did I strike her
that I sent her flying backwards, until, reaching the floor, she found
a resting-place amidst the pots and the pans. She fell with such a
clatter, and with such a din, that, in the darkness, my blood ran
cold. And, having fallen, she began to scream in a manner which
deprived me of the little self-possession I had left.
"Is that you, Leila?" I inquired.
I felt morally persuaded that it was. I did not see who else it could
be. Still, I imagined that I might as well make sure. She did not tell
me in so many words. But the voice which screamed was the voice of
Leila.
"Are you hurt?" I asked.
Again she did not answer. She only screamed. I was in darkness. I had
not saved the candle. I could not see her. I could not feel, because
every time I moved I seemed to hit her with another saucepan. I had no
matches. I knew of none nearer than the bedroom. I had to leave Leila
screaming there. I had to find my way out of that back kitchen,
stumbling, as it seemed to me, over all the contents of an
ironmonger's shop, and almost knocking out my brains against the
partly-opened door. I had to grope my way along the newspaper-covered
passages, across the newspaper-covered hall, up the newspaper-covered
stairs. I had to hang on to the newspaper-covered banisters.
If ever there was a burglar alarm I sounded it. I heard Macgregor and
Simon, his mother, indulging in their little playful pranks, above and
below me, and everywhere at once. But the servants did not seem to
hear anything. No, nothing. I had no means of knowing if Eliza had
frightened herself into a fit, and if Mrs. Perkins was dead. As I
entered the bedroom I swept a jug and basin off the wash-hand-stand.
It sounded as if I had broken the contents of a china shop. But no one
seemed to notice it--not even Simon and Macgregor. Such was my state
of agitation, and such the confusion of my mind, that I floundered
into the middle cupboard of the wardrobe, which, in some mysterious
manner, must have opened of its own accord. I had dragged all Leila's
dresses off the hooks and half smothered myself beneath them before I
discovered where I was. But I found the matches. Oh, yes, I found them
after all.
I also found Leila. She was sitting up on the kitchen floor, in the
midst of the pots and pans, in a frame of mind which, by me, was
unexpected. She seemed to be under the impression that my conduct had
been base, not to say heartless. She appeared to be under the, to me,
extraordinary delusion that I had scrambled in the darkness up the
newspaper-covered stairs, and fallen over everything which I could
fall over, because I hated her. She wept. It was all I myself could do
to refrain from tears.
However, we managed to secure Macgregor and his mother in the
drawing-room, in which apartment we felt morally persuaded that they
would break everything that was worth the breaking. Then Leila
insisted upon me rearranging the ingenious little trap which we had
laid to catch a burglar.
"What," she remarked, as she wiped away a final tear, "was the use of
doing a thing at all if we didn't do it properly?"
There was wisdom in her unanswerable inquiry, though I could not but
feel thankful as I reflected that there were no more cats in the house
who could mistake our intentions, and, under an entire misapprehension,
turn them topsy-turvy once again.
Leila seemed to think that it was all owing to me that the newspapers
had become disarranged. I do not know what could have put such an idea
into her head. But it was obviously because she thought so that she
insisted upon my doing all the work, while she stood three stairs
above me and issued her instructions.
I am of a plethoric habit, and by the time I had done all the stooping
which Leila thought was indispensable if the burglar alarm was to be
all that a burglar alarm ought to be, I was, I am convinced, within a
measurable distance of apoplexy. Indeed, I hinted to Leila that
burglars might take up their permanent residence at The Larches before
I should ever again be persuaded to make such arrangements for their
reception. As for that paragraph in the paper, the stuff which some of
the papers do contain is really monstrous. If I ever do encounter the
editor of that particular journal in private life, I care not where
nor when, I shall have to be bound over by the magistrates in at least
two sureties, I know I shall.
When Leila, on entering the bedroom, stepped on the handle of the
broken jug and perceived the rest of the remains, and that there was
about half an inch of water on the floor, I must say that I found her
behaviour not a little trying. I had not informed her of the accident
which, when I was searching for the matches, I had had, because, such
was my state of agitation, it had slipped my mind--though, I know, she
doubts it to this hour.
I was aware that she was bound to discover what had happened,
therefore why should I have attempted to conceal it? Under the
circumstances it is a mere absurdity to imagine that I could have
proposed to myself to do anything of the kind; nor was it necessary
for her to inform me, especially in the way in which she did inform
me, that that toilet set had been one of her wedding presents. If a
wedding present is to be regarded as a fetish in a family, and made a
sort of little god of, then all I can say is that I wish she had had
fewer wedding presents even than she did have.
I regret to have to write that Leila did not hesitate to suggest that
I had broken that toilet set on purpose. According to her it was all
part of my heartlessness and the hatred which I bore her. That I had
almost killed myself while hunting for the matches was nothing to her.
Nor did she pause to consider how I could have done it on purpose,
when, such was the Egyptian nature of the darkness, I did not even
know that the toilet set was there. We mopped the water up with the
towels. Then Leila knelt down and pieced the fragments of the toilet
set together as best she could, and continued to address me as if I
had been guilty, at the very least, of treason felony. When she
discovered that during my unfortunate search for those mislaid and
miserable matches I had also accidentally and quite unintentionally
visited the wardrobe, I thought that she would have thrown something
at me, even though she would have had to use as missiles pieces of the
broken ware.
It appeared that in dragging Leila's dresses off the hooks I had had
what one is bound to confess was the singular ill-fortune to tear
holes in most, if not in all of them. Insignificant holes they were
for the most part. Really hardly worth the mentioning, though you
would not have thought they were hardly worth the mentioning if you
had heard Leila. True, I had made rather a lengthy incision in the
back of her best silk, and ripped the waistband off her tailor-made;
but the rest of the garments were scarcely, that is to say, from my
point of view, not appreciably damaged. And when you consider that in
my agitation I had struggled as for my life in that death-trap of a
wardrobe, surely an allowance might have been made. Leila, however,
made absolutely none.
That was not upon the whole a restful night. Neither Leila nor I wooed
sweet sleep in that equable, at-peace-with-all-the-world frame of mind
in which she should be wooed. It was some time before I ventured into
bed at all. When at last I insinuated myself between the sheets
Leila's observations followed me. Indeed, if I may be allowed to say
so, they more than followed me. I had to coax her with all the power
of coaxing that was in me before she could be induced to even think of
slumber. Seating herself upon a chair, she announced her unalterable
determination to spend the night there rather than consent to share
her couch with the being who had torn her dresses. I perceived quite
plainly that that burglar alarm was not going to prove an economical
contrivance. The little mishaps which I had had were likely to prove a
more serious matter than any injury which mere burglars might have
caused. But no matter. Leila protests that upon that fateful night I
promised, as some slight solatium to her injured feelings, not to
speak of her damaged vestments, to present her with six new dresses.
This sounds to me almost incredible. I scarcely think that under any
circumstances I can have gone so far as that. And when she adds, as
she does add, that I gave her my solemn assurance that she should be
allowed to select and to purchase at my expense any toilet set which
she might see, and which might take her fancy when she next went up
with me to town, I can only declare that if I did give such an
undertaking it was only because I had firmly and finally resolved, in
my own mind, that while such a prospect stared me in the face she
never should go up with me to town again. But, as I have said already,
no matter. I daresay that I did promise something. Now, I do not care
what I promised. Whatever it was, the promise was extracted from me
under pressure. I never meant to keep it. That I earnestly affirm.
When finally, having for all I know promised to present her with the
contents of half the shops in Regent Street and of all the shops in
Piccadilly, I had succeeded in persuading her to come to bed, the
excitement she had undergone told upon her slight and fragile frame,
and ere long my Leila was asleep. I, too, slept at her side. Nor
during the remaining silent watches of the night did aught disturb our
rest.
We were roused by someone knocking at our bedroom door. I awoke with
the immediate consciousness that we had overslept ourselves. As a
matter of fact we had, by about two hours.
"Frederic!" exclaimed Leila, in that nervous way of hers which is apt
to convey to those who do not know her the impression that the last
trump has sounded. "There's someone at the door!"
"Who's there?" I asked.
The voice which answered was the voice of Eliza.
"If you please, sir, there's been robbers in the house!"
"Robbers! Don't talk such nonsense!"
"If you please, sir, it ain't nonsense. Mrs. Perkins says there have!"
And what Mrs. Perkins said was true. There had been robbers in the
house; or, at any rate, a robber; a midnight felon; a rifler of the
homes of honest men. He had made his entry by way of the back kitchen
window. He had had his supper in the front kitchen. A hearty meal it
must have been. There were the remains of the feast still on the
board. He seemed to have eaten all that there was worth eating. He had
drunk all that there was worth drinking. He had certainly taken away
with him on his departure all that there was worth taking. He had
stripped the house of all its valuables. True, they were not many; but
they were our all. And they were gone.
I imagine that few burglaries have been better carried through. He was
a conscientious and observant workman of his kind. The ruthless
villain! I hope one day to lay hands upon him somewhere. The county
constabulary, I am certain, never will.
As for the burglar alarm--the burglar alarm was arranged in a neat
heap in a corner of the hall. It had not fulfilled the purpose it had
been intended to fulfil. Like Macgregor and Simon, his mother, the
burglar had misunderstood the intentions which had actuated our
bosoms, Leila's and mine, when we had placed it there. He cannot have
read the paragraph we had noticed in the paper.
I suspect that that burglar must have been, in his way--his own way--a
humorist. He had seen those newspapers apparently; and, if you
reflect, it was not strange: he had wondered what they meant by being
there. Possibly he had supposed that they had been placed there to
save the oilcloth and the carpets from being stepped upon. Anyhow,
being certain that at any rate his boots were clean, and that he
stepped lightly, he picked up the newspapers carefully one by one,
folded them neatly into four, and placed them, as I have said, in a
little heap in a corner of the hall.