II.

The servants from the vicarage were not the first persons to hit upon

the dead body of the vicar. Joe Harley, the poacher, was out

reconnoitring that afternoon in the vicar's preserves; and five minutes

after Walter Dene had passed down the far side of the hedge, Joe Harley

skulked noiselessly from the orchard up to the cover of the gate by

Selbury Copse. He crept through the open end by the post (for it was

against Joe's principles under any circumstances to climb over an

obstacle of any sort, and so needlessly expose himself), and he was just

going to slink off along the other hedge, having wires and traps in his

pocket, when his boot struck violently against a soft object in the

ditch underfoot. It struck so violently that it crushed in the object

with the force of the impact; and when Joe came to look at what the

object might be, he found to his horror that it was the bruised and

livid face of the old parson. Joe had had a brush with keepers more than

once, and had spent several months of seclusion in Dorchester Gaol; but,

in spite of his familiarity with minor forms of lawlessness, he was

moved enough in all conscience by this awful and unexpected discovery.

He turned the body over clumsily with his hands, and saw that it had

been stabbed in the back once only. In doing so he trod in a little

blood, and got a drop or two on his sleeve and trousers; for the pool

was bigger now, and Joe was not so handy or dainty with his fingers as

the idyllic curate.

It was an awful dilemma, indeed, for a confirmed and convicted poacher.

Should he give the alarm then and there, boldly, trusting to his

innocence for vindication, and helping the police to discover the

murderer? Why, that would be sheer suicide, no doubt; "for who but would

believe," he thought, "'twas me as done it?" Or should he slink away

quietly and say nothing, leaving others to find the body as best they

might? That was dangerous enough in its way if anybody saw him, but not

so dangerous as the other course. In an evil hour for his own chances

Joe Harley chose that worse counsel, and slank off in his familiar

crouching fashion towards the opposite corner of the copse.

On the way he heard John's voice holloaing for his master, and kept

close to the hedge till he had quite turned the corner. But John had

caught a glimpse of him too, and John did not forget it when, a few

minutes later, he came upon the horrid sight beside the gate of Selbury

Copse.

Meanwhile Walter had taken King Charlie to the veterinary's, and had his

leg bound and bandaged securely. He had also gone down to the church,

got out his surplice, and begun to put it on in the vestry for evensong,

when a messenger came at hot haste from the vicarage, with news that

Master Walter must come up at once, for the vicar was murdered.

"Murdered!" Walter Dene said to himself slowly half aloud; "murdered!

how horrible! Murdered!" It was an ugly word, and he turned it over with

a genuine thrill of horror. That was what they would say of him if ever

the thing came to be discovered! What an inappropriate classification!

He threw aside the surplice, and rushed up hurriedly to the vicarage.

Already the servants had brought in the body, and laid it out in the

clothes it wore, on the vicar's own bed. Walter Dene went in,

shuddering, to look at it. To his utter amazement, the face was battered

in horribly and almost unrecognizably by a blow or kick! What could that

hideous mutilation mean? He could not imagine. It was an awful mystery.

Great heavens! just fancy if any one were to take it into his head that

he, Walter Dene, had done _that_--had kicked a defenceless old gentleman

brutally about the face like a common London ruffian! The idea was too

horrible to be borne for a moment. It unmanned him utterly, and he hid

his face between his two hands and sobbed aloud like one broken-hearted.

"This day's work has been too much for my nerves," he thought to himself

between the sobs; "but perhaps it is just as well I should give way now

completely."

That night was mainly taken up with the formalities of all such cases;

and when at last Walter Dene went off, tired and nerve-worn, to bed,

about midnight, he could not sleep much for thinking of the mystery. The

murder itself didn't trouble him greatly; that was over and past now,

and he felt sure his precautions had been amply sufficient to protect

him even from the barest suspicion; but he couldn't fathom the mystery

of that battered and mutilated face! Somebody must have seen the corpse

between the time of the murder and the discovery! Who could that

somebody have been? and what possible motive could he have had for such

a horrible piece of purposeless brutality?

As for the servants, in solemn conclave in the hall, they had

unanimously but one theory to account for all the facts: some poacher or

other, for choice Joe Harley, had come across the vicar in the copse,

with gun and traps in hand. The wretch had seen he was discovered, had

felled the poor old vicar by a blow in the face with the butt-end of

his rifle, and after he fell, fainting, had stabbed him for greater

security in the back. That was such an obvious solution of the

difficulty, that nobody in the servants' hall had a moment's hesitation

in accepting it.

When Walter heard next morning early that Joe Harley had been arrested

overnight, on John's information, his horror and surprise at the news

were wholly unaffected. Here was another new difficulty, indeed. "When I

did the thing," he said to himself, "I never thought of that

possibility. I took it for granted it would be a mystery, a problem for

the local police (who, of course, could no more solve it than they could

solve the _pons-asinorum_), but it never struck me they would arrest an

innocent person on the charge instead of me. This is horrible. It's so

easy to make out a case against a poacher, and hang him for it, on

suspicion. One's whole sense of justice revolts against the thing. After

all, there's a great deal to be said in favour of the ordinary

commonplace morality: it prevents complications. A man of delicate

sensibilities oughtn't to kill anybody; he lets himself in for all kinds

of unexpected contingencies, without knowing it."

At the coroner's inquest things looked very black indeed for Joe Harley.

Walter gave his evidence first, showing how he had found King Charlie

wounded in the lane; and then the others gave theirs, as to the search

for and finding of the body. John in particular swore to having seen a

man's back and head slinking away by the hedge while they were looking

for the vicar; and that back and head he felt sure were Joe Harley's. To

Walter's infinite horror and disgust, the coroner's jury returned a

verdict of wilful murder against the poor poacher. What other verdict

could they possibly have given in accordance with such evidence?

The trial of Joe Harley for the wilful murder of the Reverend Arthur

Dene was fixed for the next Dorchester Assizes. In the interval, Walter

Dene, for the first time in his placid life, knew what it was to undergo

a mental struggle. Whatever happened, he could not let Joe Harley be

hanged for this murder. His whole soul rose up within him in loathing

for such an act of hideous injustice. For though Walter Dene's code of

morality was certainly not the conventional one, as he so often boasted

to himself, he was not by any means without any code of morals of any

sort. He could commit a murder where he thought it necessary, but he

could not let an innocent man suffer in his stead. His ethical judgment

on that point was just as clear and categorical as the judgment which

told him he was in duty bound to murder his uncle. For Walter did not

argue with himself on moral questions: he perceived the right and

necessary thing intuitively; he was a law to himself, and he obeyed his

own law implicitly, for good or for evil. Such men are capable of

horrible and diabolically deliberate crimes; but they are capable of

great and genuine self-sacrifices also.

Walter made no secret in the village of his disinclination to believe in

Joe Harley's guilt. Joe was a rough fellow, he said, certainly, and he

had no objection to taking a pheasant or two, and even to having a free

fight with the keepers; but, after all, our game laws were an outrageous

piece of class legislation, and he could easily understand how the poor,

whose sense of justice they outraged, should be so set against them. He

could not think Joe Harley was capable of a detestable crime. Besides,

he had seen him himself within a few minutes before and after the

murder. Everybody thought it such a proof of the young parson's generous

and kindly disposition; he had certainly the charity which thinketh no

evil. Even though his own uncle had been brutally murdered on his own

estate, he checked his natural feelings of resentment, and refused to

believe that one of his own parishioners could have been guilty of the

crime. Nay, more, so anxious was he that substantial justice should be

done the accused, and so confident was he of his innocence, that he

promised to provide counsel for him at his own expense; and he provided

two of the ablest barristers on the Western circuit.

Before the trial, Walter Dene had come, after a terrible internal

struggle, to an awful resolution. He would do everything he could for

Joe Harley; but if the verdict went against him, he was resolved, then

and there, in open court, to confess, before judge and jury, the whole

truth. It would be a horrible thing for Christina; he knew that; but he

could not love Christina so much, "loved he not honour more;" and

honour, after his own fashion, he certainly loved dearly. Though he

might be false to all that all the world thought right, it was ingrained

in the very fibre of his soul to be true to his own inner nature at

least. Night after night he lay awake, tossing on his bed, and picturing

to his mind's eye every detail of that terrible disclosure. The jury

would bring in a verdict of guilty: then, before the judge put on his

black cap, he, Walter, would stand up, and tell them that he could not

let another man hang for his crime; he would have the whole truth out

before them; and then he would die, for he would have taken a little

bottle of poison at the first sound of the verdict. As for

Christina--oh, Christina!--Walter Dene could not dare to let himself

think upon that. It was horrible; it was unendurable; it was torture a

thousand times worse than dying: but still, he must and would face it.

For in certain phases, Walter Dene, forger and murderer as he was, could

be positively heroic.

The day of the trial came, and Walter Dene, pale and haggard with much

vigil, walked in a dream and faintly from his hotel to the court-house.

Everybody present noticed what a deep effect the shock of his uncle's

death had had upon him. He was thinner and more bloodless than usual,

and his dulled eyes looked black and sunken in their sockets. Indeed, he

seemed to have suffered far more intensely than the prisoner himself,

who walked in firmer and more erect, and took his seat doggedly in the

familiar dock. He had been there more than once before, to say the

truth, though never before on such an errand. Yet mere habit, when he

got there, made him at once assume the hang-dog look of the consciously

guilty.

Walter sat and watched and listened, still in a dream, but without once

betraying in his face the real depth of his innermost feelings. In the

body of the court he saw Joe's wife, weeping profusely and

ostentatiously, after the fashion considered to be correct by her class;

and though he pitied her from the bottom of his heart, he could only

think by contrast of Christina. What were that good woman's fears and

sorrows by the side of the grief and shame and unspeakable horror he

might have to bring upon his Christina? Pray Heaven the shock, if it

came, might kill her outright; that would at least be better than that

she should live long years to remember. More than judge, or jury, or

prisoner, Walter Dene saw everywhere, behind the visible shadows that

thronged the court, that one persistent prospective picture of

heart-broken Christina.

The evidence for the prosecution told with damning force against the

prisoner. He was a notorious poacher; the vicar was a game-preserver. He

had poached more than once on the ground of the vicarage. He was shown

by numerous witnesses to have had an animus against the vicar. He had

been seen, not in the face, to be sure, but still seen and recognized,

slinking away, immediately after the fact, from the scene of the murder.

And the prosecution had found stains of blood, believed by scientific

experts to be human, on the clothing he had worn when he was arrested.

Walter Dene listened now with terrible, unabated earnestness, for he

knew that in reality it was he himself who was upon his trial. He

himself, and Christina's happiness; for if the poacher were found

guilty, he was firmly resolved, beyond hope of respite, to tell all, and

face the unspeakable.

The defence seemed indeed a weak and feeble theory. Somebody unknown had

committed the murder, and this somebody, seen from behind, had been

mistaken by John for Joe Harley. The blood-stains need not be human, as

the cross-examination went to show, but were only known by

counter-experts to be mammalian--perhaps a rabbit's. Every poacher--and

it was admitted that Joe was a poacher--was liable to get his clothes

blood-stained. Grant they were human, Joe, it appeared, had himself once

shot off his little finger. All these points came out from the

examination of the earlier witnesses. At last, counsel put the curate

himself into the box, and proceeded to examine him briefly as a witness

for the defence.

Walter Dene stepped, pale and haggard still, into the witness-box. He

had made up his mind to make one final effort "for Christina's

happiness." He fumbled nervously all the time at a small glass phial in

his pocket, but he answered all questions without a moment's hesitation,

and he kept down his emotions with a wonderful composure which excited

the admiration of everybody present. There was a general hush to hear

him. Did he see the prisoner, Joseph Harley, on the day of the murder?

Yes, three times. When was the first occasion? From the library window,

just before the vicar left the house. What was Joseph Harley then doing?

Walking in the opposite direction from the copse. Did Joseph Harley

recognize him? Yes, he touched his hat to him. When was the second

occasion? About ten minutes later, when he, Walter, was leaving the

vicarage for a stroll. Did Joseph Harley then recognize him? Yes, he

touched his hat again, and the curate said, "Good morning, Joe; a fine

day for walking." When was the third time? Ten minutes later again, when

he was returning from the lane, carrying wounded little King Charlie.

Would it have been physically possible for the prisoner to go from the

vicarage to the spot where the murder was committed, and back again, in

the interval between the first two occasions? It would not. Would it

have been physically possible for the prisoner to do so in the interval

between the second and third occasions? It would not.

"Then in your opinion, Mr. Dene, it is physically impossible that Joseph

Harley can have committed this murder?"

"In my opinion, it is physically impossible."

While Walter Dene solemnly swore amid dead silence to this treble lie,

he did not dare to look Joe Harley once in the face; and while Joe

Harley listened in amazement to this unexpected assistance to his

case--for counsel, suspecting a mistaken identity, had not questioned

him too closely on the subject--he had presence of mind enough not to

let his astonishment show upon his stolid features. But when Walter had

finished his evidence in chief, he stole a glance at Joe; and for a

moment their eyes met. Then Walter's fell in utter self-humiliation; and

he said to himself fiercely, "I would not so have debased and degraded

myself before any man to save my own life--what is my life worth me,

after all?--but to save Christina, to save Christina, to save Christina!

I have brought all this upon myself for Christina's sake."

Meanwhile, Joe Harley was asking himself curiously what could be the

meaning of this new move on parson's part. It was deliberate perjury,

Joe felt sure, for parson could not have mistaken another person for him

three times over; but what good end for himself could parson hope to

gain by it? If it was he who had murdered the vicar (as Joe strongly

suspected), why did he not try to press the charge home against the

first person who happened to be accused, instead of committing a

distinct perjury on purpose to compass his acquittal? Joe Harley, with

his simple everyday criminal mind, could not be expected to unravel the

intricacies of so complex a personality as Walter Dene's. But even

there, on trial for his life, he could not help wondering what on earth

young parson could be driving at in this business.

The judge summed up with the usual luminously obvious alternate

platitudes. If the jury thought that John had really seen Joe Harley,

and that the curate was mistaken in the person whom he thrice saw, or

was mistaken once only out of the thrice, or had miscalculated the time

between each occurrence, or the time necessary to cover the ground to

the gate, then they would find the prisoner guilty of wilful murder. If,

on the other hand, they believed John had judged hastily, and that the

curate had really seen the prisoner three separate times, and that he

had rightly calculated all the intervals, then they would find the

prisoner not guilty. The prisoner's case rested entirely upon the

_alibi_. Supposing they thought there was a doubt in the matter, they

should give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. Walter noticed that

the judge said in every other case, "If you believe the witness

So-and-so," but that in his case he made no such discourteous

reservation. As a matter of fact, the one person whose conduct nobody

for a moment dreamt of calling in question was the real murderer.

The jury retired for more than an hour. During all that time two men

stood there in mortal suspense, intent and haggard, both upon their

trial, but not both equally. The prisoner in the dock fixed his arms in

a dogged and sullen attitude, the colour half gone from his brown cheek,

and his eyes straining with excitement, but showing no outward sign of

any emotion except the craven fear of death. Walter Dene stood almost

fainting in the body of the court, his bloodless fingers still fumbling

nervously at the little phial, and his face deadly pale with the awful

pallor of a devouring horror. His heart scarcely beat at all, but at

each long slow pulsation he could feel it throb distinctly within his

bosom. He saw or heard nothing before him, but kept his aching eyes

fixed steadily on the door by which the jury were to enter. Junior

counsel nudged one another to notice his agitation, and whispered that

that poor young curate had evidently never seen a man tried for his life

before.

At last the jury entered. Joe and Walter waited, each in his own manner,

breathless for the verdict. "Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty

or not guilty of wilful murder?" Walter took the little phial from his

pocket, and held it carefully between his finger and thumb. The awful

moment had come; the next word would decide the fate of himself and

Christina. The foreman of the jury looked up solemnly, and answered with

slow distinctness, "Not guilty." The prisoner leaned back vacantly, and

wiped his forehead; but there was an awful cry of relief from one mouth

in the body of the court, and Walter Dene sank back into the arms of the

bystanders, exhausted with suspense and overcome by the reaction. The

crowd remarked among themselves that young Parson Dene was too

tender-hearted a man to come into court at a criminal trial. He would

break his heart to see even a dog hanged, let alone his

fellow-Christians. As for Joe Harley, it was universally admitted that

he had had a narrow squeak of it, and that he had got off better than he

deserved. The jury gave him the benefit of the doubt.

As soon as all the persons concerned had returned to Churnside, Walter

sent at once for Joe Harley. The poacher came to see him in the vicarage

library. He was elated and coarsely exultant with his victory, as a

relief from the strain he had suffered, after the manner of all vulgar

natures.

"Joe," said the clergyman slowly, motioning him into a chair at the

other side of the desk, "I know that after this trial Churnside will not

be a pleasant place to hold you. All your neighbours believe, in spite

of the verdict, that you killed the vicar. I feel sure, however, that

you did not commit this murder. Therefore, as some compensation for the

suffering of mind to which you have been put, I think it well to send

you and your wife and family to Australia or Canada, whichever you like

best. I propose also to make you a present of a hundred pounds, to set

you up in your new home."

"Make it five hundred, passon," Joe said, looking at him significantly.

Walter smiled quietly, and did not flinch in any way. "I said a

hundred," he continued calmly, "and I will make it only a hundred. I

should have had no objection to making it five, except for the manner in

which you ask it. But you evidently mistake the motive of my gift. I

give it out of pure compassion for you, and not out of any other feeling

whatsoever."

"Very well, passon," said Joe sullenly, "I accept it."

"You mistake again," Walter went on blandly, for he was himself again

now. "You are not to accept it as terms; you are to thank me for it as a

pure present. I see we two partially understand each other; but it is

important you should understand me exactly as I mean it. Joe Harley,

listen to me seriously. I have saved your life. If I had been a man of a

coarse and vulgar nature, if I had been like you in a similar

predicament, I would have pressed the case against you for obvious

personal reasons, and you would have been hanged for it. But I did not

press it, because I felt convinced of your innocence, and my sense of

justice rose irresistibly against it. I did the best I could to save

you; I risked my own reputation to save you; and I have no hesitation

now in telling you that to the best of my belief, if the verdict had

gone against you, the person who really killed the vicar, accidentally

or intentionally, meant to have given himself up to the police, rather

than let an innocent man suffer."

"Passon," said Joe Harley, looking at him intently, "I believe as

you're tellin' me the truth. I zeen as much in that person's face afore

the verdict."

There was a solemn pause for a moment; and then Walter Dene said slowly,

"Now that you have withdrawn your claim as a claim, I will stretch a

point and make it five hundred. It is little enough for what you have

suffered. But I, too, have suffered terribly, terribly."

"Thank you, passon," Joe answered. "I zeen as you were turble anxious."

There was again a moment's pause. Then Walter Dene asked quietly, "How

did the vicar's face come to be so bruised and battered?"

"I stumbled up agin 'im accidental like, and didn't know I'd kicked 'un

till I'd done it. Must 'a been just a few minutes after you'd 'a left

'un."

"Joe," said the curate in his calmest tone, "you had better go; the

money will be sent to you shortly. But if you ever see my face again, or

speak or write a word of this to me, you shall not have a penny of it,

but shall be prosecuted for intimidation. A hundred before you leave,

four hundred in Australia. Now go."

"Very well, passon," Joe answered; and he went.

"Pah!" said the curate with a face of disgust, shutting the door after

him, and lighting a perfumed pastille in his little Chinese porcelain

incense-burner, as if to fumigate the room from the poacher's offensive

presence. "Pah! to think that these affairs should compel one to

humiliate and abase one's self before a vulgar clod like that! To think

that all his life long that fellow will virtually know--and

misinterpret--my secret. He is incapable of understanding that I did it

as a duty to Christina. Well, he will never dare to tell it, that's

certain, for nobody would believe him if he did; and he may congratulate

himself heartily that he's got well out of this difficulty. It will be

the luckiest thing in the end that ever happened to him. And now I hope

this little episode is finally over."

When the Churnside public learned that Walter Dene meant to carry his

belief in Joe Harley's innocence so far as to send him and his family at

his own expense out to Australia, they held that the young parson's

charity and guilelessness was really, as the doctor said, almost

Quixotic. And when, in his anxiety to detect and punish the real

murderer, he offered a reward of five hundred pounds from his own pocket

for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the

criminal, the Churnside people laughed quietly at his extraordinary

childlike simplicity of heart. The real murderer had been caught and

tried at Dorchester Assizes, they said, and had only got off by the skin

of his teeth because Walter himself had come forward and sworn to a

quite improbable and inconclusive alibi. There was plenty of time for

Joe to have got to the gate by the short cut, and that he did so

everybody at Churnside felt morally certain. Indeed, a few years later a

blood-stained bowie-knife was found in the hedge not far from the scene

of the murder, and the gamekeeper "could almost 'a took his Bible oath

he'd zeen just such a knife along o' Joe Harley."

That was not the end of Walter Dene's Quixotisms, however. When the will

was read, it turned out that almost everything was left to the young

parson; and who could deserve it better, or spend it more charitably?

But Walter, though he would not for the world seem to cast any slight or

disrespect upon his dear uncle's memory, did not approve of customs of

primogeniture, and felt bound to share the estate equally with his

brother Arthur. "Strange," said the head of the firm of Watson and

Blenkiron to himself, when he read the little paragraph about this

generous conduct in the paper; "I thought the instructions were to leave

it to his nephew Arthur, not to his nephew Walter; but there, one

forgets and confuses names of people that one does not know so easily."

"Gracious goodness!" thought the engrossing clerk; "surely it was the

other way on. I wonder if I can have gone and copied the wrong names in

the wrong places?" But in a big London business, nobody notes these

things as they would have been noted in Churnside; the vicar was always

a changeable, pernickety, huffy old fellow, and very likely he had had a

reverse will drawn up afterwards by his country lawyer. All the world

only thought that Walter Dene's generosity was really almost ridiculous,

even in a parson. When he was married to Christina, six months

afterwards, everybody said so charming a girl was well mated with so

excellent and admirable a husband.

And he really did make a very tender and loving husband and father.

Christina believed in him always, for he did his best to foster and keep

alive her faith. He would have given up active clerical duty if he

could, never having liked it (for he was above hypocrisy), but Christina

was against the project, and his bishop would not hear of it. The Church

could ill afford to lose such a man as Mr. Dene, the bishop said, in

these troubled times; and he begged him as a personal favour to accept

the living of Churnside, which was in his gift. But Walter did not like

the place, and asked for another living instead, which, being of less

value--"so like Mr. Dene to think nothing of the temporalities,"--the

bishop even more graciously granted. He has since published a small

volume of dainty little poems on uncut paper, considered by some critics

as rather pagan in tone for a clergyman, but universally allowed to be

extremely graceful, the perfection of poetical form with much delicate

mastery of poetical matter. And everybody knows that the author is

almost certain to be offered the first vacant canonry in his own

cathedral. As for the little episode, he himself has almost forgotten

all about it; for those who think a murderer must feel remorse his whole

life long, are trying to read their own emotional nature into the wholly

dispassionate character of Walter Dene.

_AN EPISODE IN HIGH LIFE._

Sir Henry Vardon, K.C.B., electrician to the Admiralty, whose title, as

everybody knows, was gazetted some six weeks since, is at this moment

the youngest living member of the British knighthood. He is now only

just thirty, and he has obtained his present high distinction by those

remarkable inventions of his in the matter of electrical signalling and

lighthouse arrangements which have been so much talked about in _Nature_

this year, and which gained him the gold medal of the Royal Society in

1881. Lady Vardon is one of the youngest and prettiest hostesses in

London, and if you would care to hear the history of their courtship

here it is.

When Harry Vardon left Oxford, only seven years ago, none of his friends

could imagine what he meant by throwing up all his chances of University

success. The son of a poor country parson in Devonshire, who had

strained his little income to the uttermost to send him to college,

Vardon of Magdalen had done credit to his father and himself in all the

schools. He gained the best demyship of his year; got a first in

classical mods.; and then unaccountably took to reading science, in

which he carried everything before him. At the end of his four years, he

walked into a scientific fellowship at Balliol as a matter of course;

and then, after twelve months' residence, he suddenly surprised the

world of Oxford by accepting a tutorship to the young Earl of Surrey,

at that time, as you doubtless remember, a minor, aged about sixteen.

But Harry Vardon had good reasons of his own for taking this tutorship.

Six months after he became a fellow of Balliol, the old vicar had died

unexpectedly, leaving his only other child, Edith, alone and unprovided

for, as was indeed natural; for the expenses of Harry's college life had

quite eaten up the meagre savings of twenty years at Little Hinton. In

order to provide a home for Edith, it was necessary that Harry should

find something or other to do which would bring in an immediate income.

School-mastering, that refuge of the destitute graduate, was not much to

his mind; and so when the senior tutor of Boniface wrote a little note

to ask whether he would care to accept the charge of a cub nobleman, as

he disrespectfully phrased it, Harry jumped at the offer, and took the

proposed salary of 400_l_. a year with the greatest alacrity. That would

far more than suffice for all Edith's simple needs, and he himself could

live upon the proceeds of his fellowship, besides finding time to

continue his electrical researches. For I will not disguise the fact

that Harry only accepted the cub nobleman as a stop-gap, and that he

meant even then to make his fortune in the end by those splendid

electrical discoveries which will undoubtedly immortalize his name in

future ages.

It was summer term when the appointment was made; and the Surrey people

(who were poor for their station) had just gone down to Colyford Abbey,

the family seat, in the valley of the Axe near Seaton. You have visited

the house, I dare say--open to visitors every Tuesday, when the family

is absent--a fine somewhat modernized mansion, with some good

perpendicular work about it still, in spite of the havoc wrought in it

by Inigo Jones, who converted the chapel and refectory of the old

Cistercians into a banqueting-hall and ballroom for the first Lord

Surrey of the present creation. It was lovely weather when Harry Vardon

went down there; and the Abbey, and the terrace, and the park, and the

beautiful valley beyond were looking their very best. Harry fell in love

with the view at once, and almost fell in love with the inmates too at

the first glance.

Lady Surrey, the mother, was sitting on a garden seat in front of the

house as the carriage which met him at Colyford station drove up to the

door. She was much younger and more beautiful than Harry had at all

expected. He had pictured the dowager to himself as a stately old lady

of sixty, with white hair and a grand manner; instead of which he found

himself face to face with a well-preserved beauty of something less than

forty, not above medium height, and still strikingly pretty in a

round-faced, mature, but very delicate fashion. She had wavy chestnut

hair, regular features, an exquisite set of pearly teeth, full cheeks

whose natural roses were perhaps just a trifle increased by not wholly

ungraceful art, and above all a lovely complexion quite unspoilt as yet

by years. She was dressed as such a person should be dressed, with no

affectation of girlishness, but in the style that best shows off ripe

beauty and a womanly figure. Harry was always a very impressionable

fellow; and I really believe that if Lady Surrey had been alone he would

have fallen over head and ears in love with her at first sight.

But there was something which kept him from falling in love at once with

Lady Surrey, and that was the girl who sat half reclining on a

tiger-skin at her feet, with a little sketching tablet on her lap. He

could hardly take full stock of the mother because he was so busy

looking at the daughter as well. I shall not attempt to describe Lady

Gladys Durant; all pretty girls fall under one of some half-dozen heads,

and description at best can really do no more than classify them. Lady

Gladys belonged to the tall and graceful aristocratic class, and she was

a good specimen of the type at seventeen. Not that Harry Vardon fell in

love with her at once; he was really in the pleasing condition of

Captain Macheath, too much engaged in looking at two pretty women to be

capable even mentally of making a choice between them. Mother and

daughter were both almost equally beautiful, each in her own distinct

style.

The countess half rose to greet him--it is condescension on the part of

a countess to notice the tutor at all, I believe; but though I am no

lover of lords myself, I will do the Durants the justice to say that

their treatment of Harry was always the very kindliest that could

possibly be expected from people of their ideas and traditions.

"Mr. Vardon?" she said interrogatively, as she held out her hand to the

new tutor. Harry bowed assent. "I'm glad you have such a lovely day to

make your first acquaintance with Colyford. It's a pretty place, isn't

it? Gladys, this is Mr. Vardon, who is kindly going to take charge of

Surrey for us."

"I'm afraid you don't know what you're going to undertake," said Gladys,

smiling and holding out her hand. "He's a dreadful pickle. Do you know

this part of the world before, Mr. Vardon?"

"Not just hereabouts," Harry answered; "my father's parish was in North

Devon, but I know the greater part of the county very well."

"That's a good thing," said Gladys quickly; "we're all Devonshire people

here, and we believe in the county with all our hearts. I wish Surrey

took his title from it. It's so absurd to take your title from a place

you don't care about only because you've got land there. I love

Devonshire people best of any."

"Mr. Vardon would probably like to see his rooms," said the countess.

"Parker, will you show him up?"

The rooms were everything that Harry could wish. There was a prettily

furnished sitting-room for himself on the front, looking across the

terrace, with a view of the valley and the sea in the distance; there

was a study next door, for tutor and pupil to work in; there was a

cheerful little bedroom behind; and downstairs at the back there was the

large bare room for which Harry had specially stipulated, wherein to put

his electrical apparatus, for he meant to experiment and work busily at

his own subject in his spare time. There was a special servant, too,

told off to wait upon him; and altogether Harry felt that if only the

social position could be made endurable, he could live very comfortably

for a year or two at Colyford Abbey.

There are some men who could never stand such a life at all. There are

others who can stand it because they can stand anything. But Harry

Vardon belonged to neither class. He was one of those who feel at home

in most places, and who can get on in all society alike. In the first

place, he was one of the handsomest fellows you ever saw, with large

dark eyes, and that particular black moustache that no woman can ever

resist. Then again he was tall and had a good presence, which impressed

even those most dangerous of critics for a private tutor, the footmen.

Moreover, he was clever, chatty, and agreeable; and it never entered

into his head that he was not conferring some distinction upon the

Surrey family by consenting to be teacher to their young

lordling--which, indeed, was after all the sober fact.

The train was in a little before seven, and there was a bit of a drive

from the station, so that Harry had only just had time to dress for

dinner when the gong sounded. In the drawing-room he met his future

pupil, a good-looking, high-spirited, but evidently lazy boy of sixteen.

The family was alone, so the earl took down his mother, while Harry gave

his arm to Lady Gladys. Before dinner was over, the new tutor had taken

the measure of the trio pretty accurately. The countess was clever, that

was certain; she took an interest in books and in art, and she could

talk lightly but well upon most current topics in the easy sparkling

style of a woman of the world. Gladys was clever too, though not booky;

she was full of sketching and music, and was delighted to hear that

Harry could paint a little in water-colours, besides being the owner of

a good violin. As to the boy, his fancy clearly ran for the most part to

dogs, guns, and cricket; and indeed, though he was no doubt a very

important person as a future member of the British legislature, I think

for the purposes of the present story, which is mainly concerned with

Harry Vardon's fortunes, we may safely leave him out of consideration.

Harry taught him as much as he could be induced to learn for an hour or

two every morning, and looked after him as far as possible when he was

anywhere within hearing throughout the rest of the day; but as the lad

was almost always out around the place somewhere with a gamekeeper or a

stable-boy, he hardly entered practically into the current of Harry's

life at all, outside the regular hours of study. As a matter of fact, he

never learnt much from anybody or did anything worth speaking of; but he

has since married a Birmingham heiress with a million or so of her own,

and is now one of the most rising young members of the House of Lords.

After dinner, the countess showed Harry her excellent collection of

Bartolozzis, and Harry, who knew something about them, showed the

countess that she was wrong as to the authenticity of one or two among

them. Then Gladys played passably well, and he sang a duet with her, in

a way that made her feel a little ashamed of her own singing. And lastly

Harry brought down his violin, at which the countess smiled a little,

for she thought it audacious on the first evening; but when he played

one of his best pieces she smiled again, for she had a good ear and a

great deal of taste. After which they all retired to bed, and Gladys

remarked to her maid, in the privacy of her own room, that the new tutor

was a very pleasant man, and quite a relief after such a stick as Mr.

Wilkinson.

At breakfast next morning the party remained unchanged, but at lunch the

two younger girls appeared upon the scene, with their governess, Miss

Martindale. Though very different in type from Gladys, Ethel Martindale

was in her way an equally pretty girl. She was small and _mignonne_,

with delicate little hands, and a light pretty figure, not too slight,

but very gracefully proportioned. Her cheeks and chin were charmingly

dimpled, and her complexion was just of that faintly-dark tinge that one

sees so often combined with light-brown hair and eyes in the moorland

parts of Lancashire. Altogether, she was a perfect foil to Gladys, and

it would have been difficult for almost any man as he sat at that table

to say which of the three, mother, daughter, or governess, was really

the prettiest. For my own part, I give my vote unreservedly for the

countess, but then I am getting somewhat grizzled now and have long been

bald; so my liking turns naturally towards ripe beauty. I hate your

self-conscious chits of seventeen, who can only chat and giggle; I like

a woman who has something to say for herself. But Harry was just turned

twenty-three, and perhaps his choice might, not unnaturally, have gone

otherwise.

The governess talked little at lunch, and seemed altogether a rather

subdued and timid girl. Harry noticed with pain that she appeared half

afraid of speaking to anybody, and also that the footmen made a marked

distinction between their manner to him and their manner to her. He

would have liked once or twice to kick the fellows for their insolence.

After lunch, Gladys and the little ones went for a stroll down towards

the river, and Harry followed after with Miss Martindale.

"Do you come from this part of England?" he asked.

"No," answered Ethel, "I come from Lancashire. My father was rector of a

small parish on the moors."

Harry's heart smote him. It might have been Edith. What a little turn of

chance had made all the difference! "My father was a parson too," he

said, and then checked himself for the half-disrespectful word, "but he

lived down here in Devonshire. Do you like Colyford?"

"Oh yes,--the place, very much. There are delightful rambles, and Lady

Gladys and I go out sketching a great deal. And it's a delightful

country for flowers."

The place, but not the life, thought Harry. Poor child, it must be very

hard for her.

"Mr. Vardon, come on here, I want you," called out Gladys from the

little stone bridge. "You know everything. Can you tell me what this

flower is?" and she held out a long spray of waving green-stuff.

"Caper spurge," said Harry, looking at it carelessly.

"Oh no," Miss Martindale put in quickly, "Portland spurge, surely."

"So it is," Harry answered, looking closer. "Then you are a bit of a

botanist, Miss Martindale?"

"Not a botanist, but very fond of the flowers."

"Miss Martindale's always picking lots of ugly things and bringing them

home," said Gladys laughingly; "aren't you, dear?"

Ethel smiled and nodded. So they went on past the bridge and out upon

the opposite side, and back again by the little white railings into the

park.

For the next three months Harry enjoyed himself in a busy way immensely.

Every morning he had his three hours' teaching, and every afternoon he

went a walk, or fished in the river, or worked at his electrical

machines. To the household at the Abbey such a man was a perfect

godsend. For he was a versatile fellow, able to turn his hand to

anything, and the Durants lived in a very quiet way, and were glad of

somebody to keep the house lively. The money was all tied up till the

boy came of age, and even then there wouldn't be much of it. Surrey had

been sent to Eton for a month or two and then removed, by request, to

prevent more violent measures; after which he was sent to two or three

other schools, always with the same result. So he was brought home again

and handed over to the domestic persuasion of a private tutor. The only

thing that kept him moderately quiet was the possibility of running

around the place with the keepers; and the only person who ever taught

him anything was Harry Vardon, though even he, I must admit, did not

succeed in impressing any very valuable lessons upon the lad's volatile

brain. The countess saw few visitors, and so a man like Harry was a real

acquisition to the little circle. He was perpetually being wanted by

everybody, everywhere, and at the end of three months he was simply

indispensable.

Lady Surrey was always consulting him as to the proper place to plant

the new wellingtonias, the right aspect for deodars, the best plan for

mounting water-colours, and the correct date of all the neighbouring

churches. It was so delightful to drive about with somebody who really

understood the history and geology and antiquities of the county, she

said; and she began to develop an extraordinary interest in prehistoric

archaeology, and to listen patiently to Harry's disquisitions on the

difference between long barrows and round barrows, or on the true nature

of the earthworks that cap the top of Membury Hill. Harry for his part

was quite ready to discourse volubly on all these subjects, for it was

his hobby to impart information, whereof he had plenty; and he liked

knocking about the country, examining castles or churches, and laying

down the law about matters architectural with much authority to two

pretty women. The countess even took an interest in his great electrical

investigation, and came into his workshop to hear all about the uses of

his mysterious batteries. As for Lady Gladys, she was for ever wanting

Mr. Vardon's opinion about the exact colour for that shadow by the

cottage, Mr. Vardon's aid in practising that difficult bit of Chopin,

Mr. Vardon's counsel about the decorative treatment of the

passion-flower on that lovely piece of crewel-work. Indeed, contrary to

Miss Martindale's express admonition, and all the dictates of propriety,

she was always running off to Harry's little sitting-room to ask his

advice about five hundred different things, five hundred times in every

twenty-four hours.

There was only one person in the household who seemed at all shy of

Harry, and that was Miss Martindale. Do what he could, he could never

get her to feel at home with him. She seemed always anxious to keep out

of his way, and never ready to join in any of his plans. This was

annoying, because Harry really liked the poor girl and felt sorry for

her lonely position. But as she would have nothing to say to him, why,

there was nothing else to be done; so he contented himself with being as

polite to her as possible, while respecting her evident wish to be let

alone.

One afternoon, when the four had been out for a drive together to visit

the old ruins near Cowhayne, and Harry had been sketching with Gladys

and lecturing to the countess to his heart's content, he was sitting on

the bench by the red cedars, when to his surprise he saw the governess

strolling carelessly across the terrace towards him. "Mr. Vardon," she

said, standing beside the bench, "I want to say something to you. You

mustn't mind my saying it, but I feel it is part of my duty. Do you

think you ought to pay so much attention to Gladys? You and I come into

a family of this sort on peculiar terms, you know. They don't think we

are quite the same sort of human beings as themselves. Now, I'm half

afraid--I don't like to say so, but I think it better I should say it

than my lady--I'm half afraid that Gladys is getting her head too much

filled with you. Whatever she does, you are always helping her. She is

for ever running off to see you about something or other. She is very

young; she meets very few other men; and you have been extremely

attentive to her. But when people like these admit you into their

family, they do so on the tacit understanding that you will not do what

they would call abusing the position. To-day, I half fancied that my

lady looked at you once or twice when you were talking to Gladys, and I

thought I would try to be brave enough to speak to you about it. If _I_

don't, I think _she_ will."

"Really, Miss Martindale," said Harry, rising and walking by her side

towards the laburnum alley, "I'm very glad you have unburdened your mind

about this matter. For myself, you know, I don't acknowledge the

obligation. I should marry any girl I liked, if she would have _me_,

whatever her artificial position might be; and I should never let any

barriers of that sort stand in my way. But I don't know that I have the

slightest intention of ever trying to marry Lady Gladys or anybody else

of the sort; so while I remain undecided on that point, I shall do as

you wish me. By the way, it strikes me now that you have been trying to

keep her away from me as much as possible."

"As part of my duty, I think I ought to do so. Yes."

"Well, you may rely upon it, I will give you no more cause for anxiety,"

said Harry; "so the less we say about it the better. What a lovely

sunset, and what a glorious colour on the cliffs at Axmouth!" And he

walked down the alley with her two or three times, talking about various

indifferent subjects. Somehow he had never managed to get on so well

with her before. She was a very nice girl, he thought, really a very

nice girl; what a pity she would never take any notice of him in any

way! However, he enjoyed that quiet half-hour immensely, and was quite

sorry when Lady Surrey came out a little later and joined them, exactly

as if she wanted to interrupt their conversation. But what a beautiful

woman Lady Surrey was too, as she came across the lawn just then in her

garden hat and the pale blue Umritzur shawl thrown loosely across her

shapely shoulders! By Jove, she was as handsome a woman, after all, as

he had ever seen.

After dinner that evening Lady Surrey sent Gladys off to Miss

Martindale's room on some small pretext, and then put Harry down on the

sofa beside her to help in arranging those interminable ferns of hers.

Evening dress suited the countess best, and she knew it. She was looking

even more beautiful than before, with her hair prettily dressed, and the

little simple turquoise necklet setting off her white neck; and she

talked a great deal to Harry, and was really very charming. No more

fascinating widow, he thought, to be found anywhere within a hundred

miles. At last she stopped, leaning over the ferns, and sat back a

little on the sofa, half fronting him. "Mr. Vardon," she said suddenly,

"there is something I wish to speak to you about, privately."

"Certainly," said Harry, half expecting the topic.

"Do you know, I think you ought not to pay such marked attention to Lady

Gladys. Two or three times I have fancied I noticed it, and have meant

to mention it to you, but I thought it might be unnecessary. On many

accounts, however, I think it is best not to let it pass any longer. The

difference of station----"

"Excuse me," said Harry, "I'm sorry to differ from you, but I don't

acknowledge differences of station."

"Well," said the countess, in a conciliatory tone, "under certain

circumstances that may be perfectly correct. A young man in your

position and with your talents has of course the whole world before

him. He can make himself whatever he pleases. I don't think, Mr. Vardon,

I have ever under-estimated the worth of brains. I do feel that

knowledge and culture are much greater things after all than mere

position. Now, in justice to me, don't you think I do?"

Harry looked at her--she was really a very beautiful woman--and then

said, "Yes, I think you have certainly better and more rational tastes

than most other people circumstanced as you are."

"I'm so glad you do," the countess answered, heartily. "I don't care for

a life of perfect frivolity and fashion, such as one gets in London. If

it were not for Gladys's sake I sometimes think I would give it up

entirely. Do you know, I often wish my life had been cast very

differently--cast among another set of people from the people I have

always mixed among. Whenever I meet clever people--literary people and

scholars--I always feel so sorry I haven't moved all my life in their

world. From one point of view, I quite recognize what you said just now,

that these artificial distinctions should not exist between people who

are really equals in intellect and culture."

"Naturally not," said Harry, to whom this proposition sounded like a

familiar truism.

"But in Lady Gladys's case, I feel I ought to guard her against seeing

too much of anybody in particular just at present. She is only

seventeen, and she is of course impressionable. Now, you know a great

many mothers would not have spoken to you as I do; but I like you, Mr.

Vardon, and I feel at home with you. You will promise me not to pay so

much attention to Gladys in future, won't you?"

As she looked at him full in the face with her beautiful eyes, Harry

felt he could just then have promised her anything. "Yes," he said, "I

will promise."

"Thank you," said the countess, looking at him again; "I am very much

obliged to you." And then for a moment there was an awkward pause, and

they both looked full into one another's eyes without saying a word.

In a minute the countess began again, and said a good many things about

what a dreadful waste of life people generally made; and what a

privilege it was to know clever people; and what a reality and purpose

there was in their lives. A great deal of this sort she said, and in a

low pleasant voice. And then there was another awkward pause, and they

looked at one another once more.

Harry certainly thought the countess very beautiful, and he liked her

very much. She was really kind-hearted and friendly; she was interested

in the subjects that pleased him; and she was after all a pretty woman,

still young as men count youth, and very agreeable--nay, anxious to

please. And then she had said what she said about the artificiality of

class distinctions so markedly and pointedly, with such a commentary

from her eyes, that Harry half fancied--well, I don't quite know what he

fancied. As he sat there beside her on the sofa, with the ferns before

him, looking straight into her eyes, and she into his, it must be clear

to all my readers that if he had any special proposition to make to her

on any abstract subject of human speculation, the time had obviously

arrived to make it. But something or other inscrutable kept him back.

"Lady Surrey----" he said, and the words stuck in his throat.

"Yes," she answered softly. "Shall ... shall we go on with the ferns?"

Lady Surrey gave a little short breath, brought back her eyes from

dreamland, and turned with a sudden smile back to the portfolio. For the

rest of the evening, the candid historian must admit that they both felt

like a pair of fools. Conversation lagged, and I don't think either of

them was sorry when the time came for retiring.

It is useless for the clumsy male psychologist to pretend that he can

see into the heart of a woman, especially when the normal action of said

heart is complicated by such queer conventionalities as that of a

countess who feels a distinct liking for her son's tutor: but if I may

venture to attempt that impossible feat of clairvoyance without rebuke,

I should be inclined to diagnose Lady Surrey's condition as she lay

sleepless for an hour or so on her pillow that night somewhat as

follows. She thought that Harry Vardon was really a very clever and a

very pleasant fellow. She thought that men in society were generally

dreadfully empty-headed and horribly vain. She thought that the

importance of disparity in age had, as a rule, been immensely overrated.

She thought that rank was after all much less valuable than she used to

think it when first she married poor dear Surrey, who was really the

kindest of men, and a thorough gentleman, but certainly not at all

brilliant. She thought that a young man of Harry's talent might, if well

connected, get into Parliament and rise, like Beaconsfield, to any

position. She thought he was very frank, and open, and gentlemanly; and

very handsome too. She thought he had half hesitated whether he should

propose to her or not, and had then drawn back because he was not

certain of the consequences. She thought that if he had proposed to

her--well, perhaps--why, yes, she might even possibly have accepted him.

She thought he would probably propose in earnest, before long, as soon

as he saw that she was not wholly averse to his attentions. She thought

in that case she might perhaps provisionally accept him, and get him to

try what he could do in the way of obtaining some sort of position--she

didn't exactly know what--where he could more easily marry her with the

least possible shock to the feelings of society. And she thought that

she really didn't know before for twenty years at least how great a

goose she positively was.

Next morning, after breakfast, Lady Surrey sent for Gladys to come to

her in her boudoir. Then she put her daughter in a chair by the window,

drew her own close to it, laid her hand kindly on her shoulder--she was

a nice little woman at heart, was the countess--and said to her gently,

"My dear Gladys, there's a little matter I want to talk to you about.

You are still very young, you know, dear; and I think you ought to be

very careful about not letting your feelings be played upon in any way,

however unconsciously. Now, you walk and talk a great deal too much,

dear, with Mr. Vardon. In many ways, it would be well that you should.

Mr. Vardon is very clever, and very well informed, and a very

instructive companion. I like you to talk to intelligent people, and to

hear intelligent people talk; it gives you something that mere books can

never give. But you know, Gladys, you should always remember the

disparity in your stations. I don't deny that there's a great deal in

all that sort of thing that's very conventional and absurd, my dear; but

still, girls are girls, and if they're thrown too much with any one

young man"--Lady Surrey was going to add, "especially when he's handsome

and agreeable," but she checked herself in time--"they're very apt to

form an affection for him. Of course I'm not suggesting that you're

likely to do anything of the sort with Mr. Vardon--I don't for a moment

suppose you would--but a girl can never be too careful. I hope you know

your position too well;" here Lady Surrey was conscious of certain

internal qualms; "and indeed whether it was Mr. Vardon or anybody else,

you are much too young to fill your head with such notions at your age.

Of course, if some really good offer had been made to you even in your

first season--say Lord St. Ives or Sir Montague--I don't say it might

not have been prudent to accept it; but under ordinary circumstances, a

girl does best to think as little as possible about such things until

she is twenty at least. However, I hope in future you'll remember that I

don't wish you to be quite so familiar in your intercourse with Mr.

Vardon."

"Very well, mamma," said Gladys quietly, drawing herself up; "I have

heard what you want to say, and I shall try to do as you wish. But I

should like to say something in return, if you'll be so kind as to

listen to me."

"Certainly, darling," Lady Surrey answered, with a vague foreboding of

something wrong.

"I don't say I care any more for Mr. Vardon than for anybody else; I

haven't seen enough of him to know whether I care for him or not. But if

ever I _do_ care for anybody, it will be for somebody like him, and not

for somebody like Lord St. Ives or Monty Fitzroy. I don't like the men I

meet in town; they all talk to us as if we were dolls or babies. I don't

want to marry a man who says to himself, as Surrey says already, 'Ah, I

shall look out for some rich girl or other and make her a countess, if

she's a good girl, and if she suits me.' I'd rather have a man like Mr.

Vardon than any of the men we ever meet in London."

"But, my darling," said Lady Surrey, quite alarmed at Gladys' too

serious tone, "surely there are gentlemen quite as clever and quite as

intellectual as Mr. Vardon."

"Mamma!" cried Gladys, rising, "do you mean to say Mr. Vardon is not a

gentleman?"

"Gladys, Gladys! sit down, dear. Don't get so excited. Of course he is.

I trust I have as great a respect as anybody for talent and culture. But

what I meant to say was this--can't you find as much talent and culture

among people of our own station as--as among people of Mr. Vardon's?"

"No," said Gladys shortly.

"Really, my dear, you are too hard upon the peerage."

"Well, mamma, can you mention any one that we know who is?" asked the

peremptory girl.

"Not exactly in our own set," said Lady Surrey hesitatingly; "but surely

there must be _some_."

"I don't know them," Gladys replied quietly, "and till I _do_ know them,

I shall remain of my own opinion still. If you wish me not to see so

much of Mr. Vardon, I shall try to do as you say; but if I happen to

like any particular person, whether he's a peer or a ploughboy, I can't

help liking him, so there's an end of it." And Gladys kissed her mother

demurely on the forehead, and walked with a stately sweep out of the

room.

"It's perfectly clear," said Lady Surrey to herself, "that that girl's

in love with Mr. Vardon, and what on earth I'm to do about it is to me a

mystery." And indeed Lady Surrey's position was by no means an easy one.

On the one hand, she felt that whatever she herself, who was a person of

mature years, might happen to do, it would be positively wicked in her

to allow a young girl like Gladys to throw herself away on a man in

Harry Vardon's position. Without any shadow of an _arriere pensee_, that

was her genuine feeling as a mother and a member of society. But then,

on the other hand, how could she oppose it, if she really ever thought

herself, even conditionally, of marrying Harry Vardon? Could she endure

that her daughter should think she had acted as her rival? Could she

press the point about Harry's conventional disadvantages, when she

herself had some vague idea that if Harry offered himself as Gladys'

step-father, she would not be wholly disinclined to consider his

proposal? Could she set it down as a crime in her daughter to form the

very self-same affection which she herself had well-nigh formed?

Moreover, she couldn't help feeling in her heart that Gladys was right,

after all; and that the daughter's defiance of conventionality was

implicitly inherited from the mother. If she had met Harry Vardon twenty

years ago, she would have thought and spoken much like Gladys; in fact,

though she didn't speak, she thought so, very nearly, even now. I am

sorry that I am obliged to write out these faint outlines of ideas in

all the brutal plainness of the English language as spoken by men; I

cannot give all those fine shades of unspoken reservations and womanly

self-deceptive subterfuges by which the poor little countess half

disguised her own meaning even from herself; but at least you will not

be surprised to hear that in the end she lay down on the little couch in

the corner, covered her face with chagrin and disappointment, and had a

good cry. Then she got up an hour later, washed her eyes carefully to

take off the redness, put on her pretty dove-coloured morning gown with

the lace trimming--she looked charming in lace--and went down smiling to

lunch, as pleasant and cheery a little widow of thirty-seven as ever you

would wish to see. Upon my soul, Harry Vardon, I really almost think you

will be a fool if you don't finally marry the countess!

"Gladys," said little Lord Surrey to his sister that evening, when she

came into his room on her way upstairs to bed--"Gladys, it's my opinion

you're getting too sweet on this fellow Vardon."

"I shall be obliged, Surrey, if you'll mind your own business, and allow

me to mind mine."

"Oh, it's no use coming the high and mighty over me, I can tell you, so

don't you try it on. Besides, I have something I want to speak to you

about particularly. It's my opinion also that my lady's doing the very

same thing."

"What nonsense, Surrey!" cried Gladys, colouring up to her eyebrows in a

second: "how dare you say such a thing about mamma?" But a light broke

in upon her suddenly all the same, and a number of little unnoticed

circumstances flashed back at once upon her memory with a fresh flood of

meaning.

"Nonsense or not, it's true, I know; and what I want to say to you is

this--If old Vardon's to marry either of you, it ought to be you,

because that would save mamma at any rate from making a fool of herself.

As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather neither of you did; for I don't see

why either of you should want to marry a beggarly fellow of a

tutor"--Gladys' eyes flashed fire--"though Vardon's a decent enough chap

in his way, if that was all; but at any rate, as one or other of you's

cock-sure to do it, I don't want him for a step-father. So you see, as

far as that goes, I back the filly. Now, say no more about it, but go to

bed like a good girl, and mind, whatever you do, you don't forget to say

your prayers. Good night, old girl."

"I wouldn't marry a fellow like Surrey," said Gladys to herself, as she

went upstairs, "no, not if he was the premier duke of England!"

For the next three weeks there was such a comedy of errors and

cross-purposes at Colyford Abbey as was never seen before anywhere

outside of one of Mr. Gilbert's clever extravaganzas. Lady Surrey tried

to keep Gladys in every possible way out of Harry's sight; while her

brother tried in every possible way to throw them together. Gladys on

her part half avoided him, and yet grew somewhat more confidential than

ever whenever she happened to talk with him. Harry did not feel quite so

much at home as before with Lady Surrey; he had an uncomfortable sense

that he had failed to acquit himself as he ought to have done; while

Lady Surrey had a half suspicion that she had let him see her unfledged

secret a little too early and too openly. The natural consequence of all

this was that Harry was cast far more than before upon the society of

Ethel Martindale, with whom he often strolled about the shrubbery till

very close upon the dressing gong. Ethel did not come down to

dinner--she dined with the little ones at the family luncheon; and that

horrid galling distinction cut Harry to the quick every night when he

left her to go in. Every day, too, it began to dawn upon him more

clearly that the vague reason which had kept him back from proposing to

Lady Surrey on that eventful night was just this--that Ethel Martindale

had made herself a certain vacant niche in his unfurnished heart. She

was a dear, quiet, unassuming little girl, but so very graceful, so very

tender, so very womanly, that she crept into his affections unawares

without possibility of resistance. The countess was a beautiful and

accomplished woman of the world, with a real heart left in her still,

but not quite the sort of tender, shrinking, girlish heart that Harry

wanted. Gladys was a lovely girl with stately manners and a wonderfully

formed character, but too great and too redolent of society for Harry.

He admired them both, each in her own way, but he couldn't possibly have

lived a lifetime with either. But Ethel, dear, meek, pretty, gentle

little Ethel--well, there, I'm not going to repeat for you all the

raptures that Harry went into over that perennial and ever rejuvenescent

theme. For, to tell you the truth, about three weeks after the night

when Harry did _not_ propose to the countess, he actually _did_ propose

to Ethel Martindale. And Ethel, after many timid protests, after much

demure self-depreciation and declaration of utter unworthiness for such

a man--which made Harry wild with indignation--did finally let him put

her little hand to his lips, and whispered a sort of broken and blushing

"Yes."

What a fool he had been, he thought that evening, to suppose for half a

second that Lady Surrey had ever meant to regard him in any other light

than as her son's tutor. He hated himself for his own nonsensical

vanity. Who was he that he should fancy all the women in England were in

love with him?

Next morning's _Times_ contained that curious announcement about its

being the intention of the Government to appoint an electrician to the

Admiralty, and inviting applications from distinguished men of science.

Now Harry, young as he was, had just perfected his great system of the

double-revolving commutator and back-action rheostat (Patent Office, No.

18,237,504), and had sent in a paper on the subject which had been read

with great success at the Royal Society. The famous Professor Brusegay

himself had described it as a remarkable invention, likely to prove of

immense practical importance to telegraphy and electrical science

generally. So when Harry saw the announcement that morning, he made up

his mind to apply for the appointment at once; and he thought that if he

got it, as the salary was a good one, he might before long marry Ethel,

and yet manage to keep Edith in the same comfort as before.

Lady Surrey saw the paragraph too, and had her own ideas about what it

might be made to do. It was the very opening that Harry wanted, and if

he got it, why then no doubt he might make the proposal which he

evidently felt afraid to make, poor fellow, in his present position. So

she went into her boudoir immediately after breakfast, and wrote two

careful and cautiously worded little notes. One was to Dr. Brusegay,

whom she knew well, mentioning to him that her son's tutor was the

author of that remarkable paper on commutators, and that she thought he

would probably be admirably fitted for the post, but that on that point

the Professor himself was the best judge; the other was to her cousin,

Lord Ardenleigh, who was a great man in the government of the day,

suggesting casually that he should look into the claims of her friend,

Mr. Vardon, for this new place at the Admiralty. Two nicer little notes,

written with better tact and judgment, it would be difficult to find.

At that very moment Harry was also sitting down in his own room, after

five minutes' consultation with Ethel, to make formal application for

the new post. And after lunch the same day he spoke to Lady Surrey upon

the subject.

"There is one special reason," he said, "why I should like to get this

post, and I think I ought to let you know it now." Poor little Lady

Surrey's heart fluttered like a girl's. "The fact is, I am anxious to

obtain a position which would enable me to marry." ("How very bluntly he

puts it," said the countess to herself.) "I ought to tell you, I think,

that I have proposed to Miss Martindale, and she has accepted me."

Miss Martindale! Great heavens, how the room reeled round the poor

little woman, as she stood with her hand on the table, trying to balance

herself, trying to conceal her shame and mortification, trying to look

as if the announcement did not concern her in any way. Poor, dear, good

little countess; from my heart I pity you. Miss Martindale! why, she had

never even thought of _her_. A mere governess, a nobody; and Harry

Vardon, with his magnificent intellect and splendid prospects, was going

to throw himself away on that girl! She could hardly control herself to

answer him, but with a great effort she gulped down her feelings, and

remarked that Ethel Martindale was a very good girl, and would doubtless

make an admirable wife. And then she walked quietly out of the room,

stepped up the stairs somewhat faster, rushed into her boudoir,

double-locked the door, and burst into a perfect flood of hot scalding

tears. At that moment she began to realize the fact that she had in

truth liked Harry Vardon much more than a little.

By-and-by she got up, went over to her desk, took out the two unposted

notes, tore them into fragments, and then carefully burnt them up piece

by piece, in a perfect holocaust of white paper. What a wicked

vindictive little countess! Was she going to spoil these two young

people's lives, to throw every possible obstacle in the way of their

marriage? Not a bit of it. As soon as her eyes allowed her, she sat down

and wrote two more notes, a great deal stronger and better than before;

for this time she need not fear the possibility of after reflections

from an unkind world. She said a great deal in a casual half-hinting

fashion about Harry's merits, and remarked upon the loss that she should

sustain in the removal of such a tutor from Lord Surrey; but she felt

that sooner or later his talents must get him a higher recognition, and

she hoped Dr. Brusegay and her cousin would use their influence to

obtain him the appointment. Then she went downstairs feeling like a

Christian martyr, kissed and congratulated Ethel, talked gaily about

Bartolozzi to Harry, and tried to make believe that she took the

engagement as a matter of course. Nothing in fact, as she remarked to

Gladys, could possibly be more suitable. Gladys bit her tongue, and

answered shortly that she didn't herself perceive any special natural

congruity about the match, but perhaps her mother was better informed on

the subject.

Now, we all know that in the matter of public appointment anything like

backstairs influence or indirect canvassing is positively fatal to the

success of a candidate. Accordingly, it may surprise you to learn that

when Professor Brusegay (who held the appointment virtually in his

hands) opened his letters next morning he said to his wife, "Why, Maria,

that young fellow Vardon who wrote that astonishingly clever paper on

commutators, you know, is tutor at Lady Surrey's, and she wants him to

get this place at the Admiralty. We must really see what we can do about

it. Lady Surrey is such a very useful person to know, and besides it's

so important to keep on good terms with her, for the Paulsons would be

absolutely intolerable if we hadn't its acquaintance in the peerage to

play off against their Lord Poodlebury." And when the Professor shortly

afterwards mentioned Harry's name to Lord Ardenleigh, his lordship

remarked immediately, "Why, bless my soul, that's the very man Amelia

wrote to me about. He shall have the place, by all means." And they

both wrote back nice little notes to Lady Surrey, to say that she might

consider the matter settled, but that she mustn't mention it to Harry

until the appointment was regularly announced. Anything so remarkable in

this age of purity I for my part have seldom heard of.

Lady Surrey never did mention the matter to Harry from that day to this;

and Sir Henry Vardon, K.C.B., does not for a moment imagine even now

that he owes his advancement to anything but his own native merits. He

married Ethel shortly after, and a prettier or more blushing bride you

never saw. Lady Surrey has been their best friend in society, and still

sighs occasionally when she sees Harry a great magnate in his way, and

thinks of the narrow escape he had that night at Colyford. As to Gladys,

she consistently refused several promising heirs, at least twenty

younger sons, and a score or so of wealthy young men whose papas were

something in the City, her first five seasons; and then, to Lord

Surrey's horror, she married a young Scotchman from Glasgow, who was

merely a writer for some London paper, and had nothing on earth but a

head on his shoulders to bless himself with. His lordship himself

"bagged an heiress" as he expressively puts it, with several thousands a

year of her own, and is now one of the most respected members of his

party, who may be counted upon always to vote straight, and never to

have any opinions of his own upon any subject except the improvement of

the British racehorse. He often wishes Gladys had taken his advice and

married Vardon, who is at least in respectable society, instead of that

shock-headed Scotch fellow--but there, the girl was always full of

fancies, and never would behave like other people.

For myself, I am a horrid radical, and republican, and all that sort of

thing, and have a perfectly rabid hatred of titles and so forth, don't

you know?--but still, on the first day when Ethel went to call on the

countess dowager after Harry was knighted, I happened to be present

(purely on business), and heard her duly announced as "Lady Vardon:" and

I give you my word of honour I could not find it in my heart to grudge

the dear little woman the flush of pride that rose upon her cheek as she

entered the room for the first time in her new position. It was a

pleasure to me (who know the whole story) to see Lady Surrey kiss the

little ex-governess warmly on her cheek and say to her, "My dear Lady

Vardon, I am so glad, so very very glad." And I really believe she meant

it. After all, in spite of her little weakness, there is a great deal of

human nature left in the countess.

_MY NEW YEARS EVE AMONG THE MUMMIES._

I have been a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth for a

good many years now, and I have certainly had some odd adventures in my

time; but I can assure you, I never spent twenty-four queerer hours than

those which I passed some twelve months since in the great unopened

Pyramid of Abu Yilla.

The way I got there was itself a very strange one. I had come to Egypt

for a winter tour with the Fitz-Simkinses, to whose daughter Editha I

was at that precise moment engaged. You will probably remember that old

Fitz-Simkins belonged originally to the wealthy firm of Simkinson and

Stokoe, worshipful vintners; but when the senior partner retired from

the business and got his knighthood, the College of Heralds opportunely

discovered that his ancestors had changed their fine old Norman name for

its English equivalent some time about the reign of King Richard I.; and

they immediately authorized the old gentleman to resume the patronymic

and the armorial bearings of his distinguished forefathers. It's really

quite astonishing how often these curious coincidences crop up at the

College of Heralds.

Of course it was a great catch for a landless and briefless barrister

like myself--dependent on a small fortune in South American securities,

and my precarious earnings as a writer of burlesque--to secure such a

valuable prospective property as Editha Fitz-Simkins. To be sure, the

girl was undeniably plain; but I have known plainer girls than she was,

whom forty thousand pounds converted into My Ladies: and if Editha

hadn't really fallen over head and ears in love with me, I suppose old

Fitz-Simkins would never have consented to such a match. As it was,

however, we had flirted so openly and so desperately during the

Scarborough season, that it would have been difficult for Sir Peter to

break it off: and so I had come to Egypt on a tour of insurance to

secure my prize, following in the wake of my future mother-in-law, whose

lungs were supposed to require a genial climate--though in my private

opinion they were really as creditable a pair of pulmonary appendages as

ever drew breath.

Nevertheless, the course of our true love did not run so smoothly as

might have been expected. Editha found me less ardent than a devoted

squire should be; and on the very last night of the old year she got up

a regulation lovers' quarrel, because I had sneaked away from the boat

that afternoon, under the guidance of our dragoman, to witness the

seductive performances of some fair Ghawazi, the dancing girls of a

neighbouring town. How she found it out heaven only knows, for I gave

that rascal Dimitri five piastres to hold his tongue: but she did find

it out somehow, and chose to regard it as an offence of the first

magnitude: a mortal sin only to be expiated by three days of penance and

humiliation.

I went to bed that night, in my hammock on deck, with feelings far from

satisfactory. We were moored against the bank at Abu Yilla, the most

pestiferous hole between the cataracts and the Delta. The mosquitoes

were worse than the ordinary mosquitoes of Egypt, and that is saying a

great deal. The heat was oppressive even at night, and the malaria from

the lotus beds rose like a palpable mist before my eyes. Above all, I

was getting doubtful whether Editha Fitz-Simkins might not after all

slip between my fingers. I felt wretched and feverish: and yet I had

delightful interlusive recollections, in between, of that lovely little

Ghaziyah, who danced that exquisite, marvellous, entrancing, delicious,

and awfully oriental dance that I saw in the afternoon.

By Jove, she _was_ a beautiful creature. Eyes like two full moons; hair

like Milton's Penseroso; movements like a poem of Swinburne's set to

action. If Editha was only a faint picture of that girl now! Upon my

word, I was falling in love with a Ghaziyah!

Then the mosquitoes came again. Buzz--buzz--buzz. I make a lunge at the

loudest and biggest, a sort of prima donna in their infernal opera. I

kill the prima donna, but ten more shrill performers come in its place.

The frogs croak dismally in the reedy shallows. The night grows hotter

and hotter still. At last, I can stand it no longer. I rise up, dress

myself lightly, and jump ashore to find some way of passing the time.

Yonder, across the flat, lies the great unopened Pyramid of Abu Yilla.

We are going to-morrow to climb to the top; but I will take a turn to

reconnoitre in that direction now. I walk across the moonlit fields, my

soul still divided between Editha and the Ghaziyah, and approach the

solemn mass of huge, antiquated granite-blocks standing out so grimly

against the pale horizon. I feel half awake, half asleep, and altogether

feverish: but I poke about the base in an aimless sort of way, with a

vague idea that I may perhaps discover by chance the secret of its

sealed entrance, which has ere now baffled so many pertinacious

explorers and learned Egyptologists.

As I walk along the base, I remember old Herodotus's story, like a page

from the "Arabian Nights," of how King Rhampsinitus built himself a

treasury, wherein one stone turned on a pivot like a door; and how the

builder availed himself of this his cunning device to steal gold from

the king's storehouse. Suppose the entrance to the unopened Pyramid

should be by such a door. It would be curious if I should chance to

light upon the very spot.

I stood in the broad moonlight, near the north-east angle of the great

pile, at the twelfth stone from the corner. A random fancy struck me,

that I might turn this stone by pushing it inward on the left side. I

leant against it with all my weight, and tried to move it on the

imaginary pivot. Did it give way a fraction of an inch? No, it must have

been mere fancy. Let me try again. Surely it is yielding! Gracious

Osiris, it has moved an inch or more! My heart beats fast, either with

fever or excitement, and I try a third time. The rust of centuries on

the pivot wears slowly off, and the stone turns ponderously round,

giving access to a low dark passage.

It must have been madness which led me to enter the forgotten corridor,

alone, without torch or match, at that hour of the evening; but at any

rate I entered. The passage was tall enough for a man to walk erect, and

I could feel, as I groped slowly along, that the wall was composed of

smooth polished granite, while the floor sloped away downward with a

slight but regular descent. I walked with trembling heart and faltering

feet for some forty or fifty yards down the mysterious vestibule: and

then I felt myself brought suddenly to a standstill by a block of stone

placed right across the pathway. I had had nearly enough for one

evening, and I was preparing to return to the boat, agog with my new

discovery, when my attention was suddenly arrested by an incredible, a

perfectly miraculous fact.

The block of stone which barred the passage was faintly visible as a

square, by means of a struggling belt of light streaming through the

seams. There must be a lamp or other flame burning within. What if this

were a door like the outer one, leading into a chamber perhaps

inhabited by some dangerous band of outcasts? The light was a sure

evidence of human occupation: and yet the outer door swung rustily on

its pivot as though it had never been opened for ages. I paused a moment

in fear before I ventured to try the stone: and then, urged on once more

by some insane impulse, I turned the massive block with all my might to

the left. It gave way slowly like its neighbour, and finally opened into

the central hall.

Never as long as I live shall I forget the ecstasy of terror,

astonishment, and blank dismay which seized upon me when I stepped into

that seemingly enchanted chamber. A blaze of light first burst upon my

eyes, from jets of gas arranged in regular rows tier above tier, upon

the columns and walls of the vast apartment. Huge pillars, richly

painted with red, yellow, blue, and green decorations, stretched in

endless succession down the dazzling aisles. A floor of polished syenite

reflected the splendour of the lamps, and afforded a base for red

granite sphinxes and dark purple images in porphyry of the cat-faced

goddess Pasht, whose form I knew so well at the Louvre and the British

Museum. But I had no eyes for any of these lesser marvels, being wholly

absorbed in the greatest marvel of all: for there, in royal state and

with mitred head, a living Egyptian king, surrounded by his coiffured

court, was banqueting in the flesh upon a real throne, before a table

laden with Memphian delicacies!

I stood transfixed with awe and amazement, my tongue and my feet alike

forgetting their office, and my brain whirling round and round, as I

remember it used to whirl when my health broke down utterly at Cambridge

after the Classical Tripos. I gazed fixedly at the strange picture

before me, taking in all its details in a confused way, yet quite

incapable of understanding or realizing any part of its true import. I

saw the king in the centre of the hall, raised on a throne of granite

inlaid with gold and ivory; his head crowned with the peaked cap of

Rameses, and his curled hair flowing down his shoulders in a set and

formal frizz. I saw priests and warriors on either side, dressed in the

costumes which I had often carefully noted in our great collections;

while bronze-skinned maids, with light garments round their waists, and

limbs displayed in graceful picturesqueness, waited upon them, half

nude, as in the wall paintings which we had lately examined at Karnak

and Syene. I saw the ladies, clothed from head to foot in dyed linen

garments, sitting apart in the background, banqueting by themselves at a

separate table; while dancing girls, like older representatives of my

yesternoon friends, the Ghawazi, tumbled before them in strange

attitudes, to the music of four-stringed harps and long straight pipes.

In short, I beheld as in a dream the whole drama of everyday Egyptian

royal life, playing itself out anew under my eyes, in its real original

properties and personages.

Gradually, as I looked, I became aware that my hosts were no less

surprised at the appearance of their anachronistic guest than was the

guest himself at the strange living panorama which met his eyes. In a

moment music and dancing ceased; the banquet paused in its course, and

the king and his nobles stood up in undisguised astonishment to survey

the strange intruder.

Some minutes passed before any one moved forward on either side. At last

a young girl of royal appearance, yet strangely resembling the Ghaziyah

of Abu Yilla, and recalling in part the laughing maiden in the

foreground of Mr. Long's great canvas at the previous Academy, stepped

out before the throng.

"May I ask you," she said in Ancient Egyptian, "who you are, and why you

come hither to disturb us?"

I was never aware before that I spoke or understood the language of the

hieroglyphics: yet I found I had not the slightest difficulty in

comprehending or answering her question. To say the truth, Ancient

Egyptian, though an extremely tough tongue to decipher in its written

form, becomes as easy as love-making when spoken by a pair of lips like

that Pharaonic princess's. It is really very much the same as English,

pronounced in a rapid and somewhat indefinite whisper, and with all the

vowels left out.

"I beg ten thousand pardons for my intrusion," I answered

apologetically; "but I did not know that this Pyramid was inhabited, or

I should not have entered your residence so rudely. As for the points

you wish to know, I am an English tourist, and you will find my name

upon this card;" saying which I handed her one from the case which I had

fortunately put into my pocket, with conciliatory politeness. The

princess examined it closely, but evidently did not understand its

import.

"In return," I continued, "may I ask you in what august presence I now

find myself by accident?"

A court official stood forth from the throng, and answered in a set

heraldic tone: "In the presence of the illustrious monarch, Brother of

the Sun, Thothmes the Twenty-seventh, king of the Eighteenth Dynasty."

"Salute the Lord of the World," put in another official in the same

regulation drone.

I bowed low to his Majesty, and stepped out into the hall. Apparently my

obeisance did not come up to Egyptian standards of courtesy, for a

suppressed titter broke audibly from the ranks of bronze-skinned

waiting-women. But the king graciously smiled at my attempt, and turning

to the nearest nobleman, observed in a voice of great sweetness and

self-contained majesty: "This stranger, Ombos, is certainly a very

curious person. His appearance does not at all resemble that of an

Ethiopian or other savage, nor does he look like the pale-faced sailors

who come to us from the Achaian land beyond the sea. His features, to be

sure, are not very different from theirs; but his extraordinary and

singularly inartistic dress shows him to belong to some other barbaric

race."

I glanced down at my waistcoat, and saw that I was wearing my tourist's

check suit, of grey and mud colour, with which a Bond Street tailor had

supplied me just before leaving town, as the latest thing out in fancy

tweeds. Evidently these Egyptians must have a very curious standard of

taste not to admire our pretty and graceful style of male attire.

"If the dust beneath your Majesty's feet may venture upon a suggestion,"

put in the officer whom the king had addressed, "I would hint that this

young man is probably a stray visitor from the utterly uncivilized lands

of the North. The head-gear which he carries in his hand obviously

betrays an Arctic habitat."

I had instinctively taken off my round felt hat in the first moment of

surprise, when I found myself in the midst of this strange throng, and I

was standing now in a somewhat embarrassed posture, holding it awkwardly

before me like a shield to protect my chest.

"Let the stranger cover himself," said the king.

"Barbarian intruder, cover yourself," cried the herald. I noticed

throughout that the king never directly addressed anybody save the

higher officials around him.

I put on my hat as desired. "A most uncomfortable and silly form of

tiara indeed," said the great Thothmes.

"Very unlike your noble and awe-spiring mitre, Lion of Egypt," answered

Ombos.

"Ask the stranger his name," the king continued.

It was useless to offer another card, so I mentioned it in a clear

voice.

"An uncouth and almost unpronounceable designation truly," commented his

Majesty to the Grand Chamberlain beside him. "These savages speak

strange languages, widely different from the flowing tongue of Memnon

and Sesostris."

The chamberlain bowed his assent with three low genuflexions. I began to

feel a little abashed at these personal remarks, and I _almost_ think

(though I shouldn't like it to be mentioned in the Temple) that a blush

rose to my cheek.

The beautiful princess, who had been standing near me meanwhile in an

attitude of statuesque repose, now appeared anxious to change the

current of the conversation. "Dear father," she said with a respectful

inclination, "surely the stranger, barbarian though he be, cannot relish

such pointed allusions to his person and costume. We must let him feel

the grace and delicacy of Egyptian refinement. Then he may perhaps carry

back with him some faint echo of its cultured beauty to his northern

wilds."

"Nonsense, Hatasou," replied Thothmes XXVII. testily. "Savages have no

feelings, and they are as incapable of appreciating Egyptian sensibility

as the chattering crow is incapable of attaining the dignified reserve

of the sacred crocodile."

"Your Majesty is mistaken," I said, recovering my self-possession

gradually and realizing my position as a free-born Englishman before the

court of a foreign despot--though I must allow that I felt rather less

confident than usual, owing to the fact that we were not represented in

the Pyramid by a British Consul--"I am an English tourist, a visitor

from a modern land whose civilization far surpasses the rude culture of

early Egypt; and I am accustomed to respectful treatment from all other

nationalities, as becomes a citizen of the First Naval Power in the

World."

My answer created a profound impression. "He has spoken to the Brother

of the Sun," cried Ombos in evident perturbation. "He must be of the

Blood Royal in his own tribe, or he would never have dared to do so!"

"Otherwise," added a person whose dress I recognized as that of a

priest, "he must be offered up in expiation to Amon-Ra immediately."

As a rule I am a decently truthful person, but under these alarming

circumstances I ventured to tell a slight fib with an air of nonchalant

boldness. "I am a younger brother of our reigning king," I said without

a moment's hesitation; for there was nobody present to gainsay me, and I

tried to salve my conscience by reflecting that at any rate I was only

claiming consanguinity with an imaginary personage.

"In that case," said King Thothmes, with more geniality in his tone,

"there can be no impropriety in my addressing you personally. Will you

take a place at our table next to myself, and we can converse together

without interrupting a banquet which must be brief enough in any

circumstances? Hatasou, my dear, you may seat yourself next to the

barbarian prince."

I felt a visible swelling to the proper dimensions of a Royal Highness

as I sat down by the king's right hand. The nobles resumed their places,

the bronze-skinned waitresses left off standing like soldiers in a row

and staring straight at my humble self, the goblets went round once

more, and a comely maid soon brought me meat, bread, fruits, and date

wine.

All this time I was naturally burning with curiosity to inquire who my

strange hosts might be, and how they had preserved their existence for

so many centuries in this undiscovered hall; but I was obliged to wait

until I had satisfied his Majesty of my own nationality, the means by

which I had entered the Pyramid, the general state of affairs throughout

the world at the present moment, and fifty thousand other matters of a

similar sort. Thothmes utterly refused to believe my reiterated

assertion that our existing civilization was far superior to the

Egyptian; "because," said he, "I see from your dress that your nation is

utterly devoid of taste or invention;" but he listened with great

interest to my account of modern society, the steam-engine, the

Permissive Prohibitory Bill, the telegraph, the House of Commons, Home

Rule, and the other blessings of our advanced era, as well as to a brief

_resume_ of European history from the rise of the Greek culture to the

Russo-Turkish war. At last his questions were nearly exhausted, and I

got a chance of making a few counter inquiries on my own account.

"And now," I said, turning to the charming Hatasou, whom I thought a

more pleasing informant than her august papa, "I should like to know who

_you_ are."

"What, don't you know?" she cried with unaffected surprise. "Why, we're

mummies."

She made this astounding statement with just the same quiet

unconsciousness as if she had said, "we're French," or "we're

Americans." I glanced round the walls, and observed behind the columns,

what I had not noticed till then--a large number of empty mummy-cases,

with their lids placed carelessly by their sides.

"But what are you doing here?" I asked in a bewildered way.

"Is it possible," said Hatasou, "that you don't really know the object

of embalming? Though your manners show you to be an agreeable and

well-bred young man, you must excuse my saying that you are shockingly

ignorant. We are made into mummies in order to preserve our immortality.

Once in every thousand years we wake up for twenty-four hours, recover

our flesh and blood, and banquet once more upon the mummied dishes and

other good things laid by for us in the Pyramid. To-day is the first day

of a millennium, and so we have waked up for the sixth time since we

were first embalmed."

"The _sixth_ time?" I inquired incredulously. "Then you must have been

dead six thousand years."

"Exactly so."

"But the world has not yet existed so long," I cried, in a fervour of

orthodox horror.

"Excuse me, barbarian prince. This is the first day of the three

hundred and twenty-seven thousandth millennium."

My orthodoxy received a severe shock. However, I had been accustomed to

geological calculations, and was somewhat inclined to accept the

antiquity of man; so I swallowed the statement without more ado.

Besides, if such a charming girl as Hatasou had asked me at that moment

to turn Mohammedan, or to worship Osiris, I believe I should

incontinently have done so.

"You wake up only for a single day and night, then?" I said.

"Only for a single day and night. After that, we go to sleep for another

millennium."

"Unless you are meanwhile burned as fuel on the Cairo Railway," I added

mentally. "But how," I continued aloud, "do you get these lights?"

"The Pyramid is built above a spring of inflammable gas. We have a

reservoir in one of the side chambers in which it collects during the

thousand years. As soon as we awake, we turn it on at once from the tap,

and light it with a lucifer match."

"Upon my word," I interposed, "I had no notion you Ancient Egyptians

were acquainted with the use of matches."

"Very likely not. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Cephrenes,

than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' as the bard of Philae puts it."

Further inquiries brought out all the secrets of that strange

tomb-house, and kept me fully interested till the close of the banquet.

Then the chief priest solemnly rose, offered a small fragment of meat to

a deified crocodile, who sat in a meditative manner by the side of his

deserted mummy-case, and declared the feast concluded for the night. All

rose from their places, wandered away into the long corridors or

side-aisles, and formed little groups of talkers under the brilliant

gas-lamps.

For my part, I scrolled off with Hatasou down the least illuminated of

the colonnades, and took my seat beside a marble fountain, where several

fish (gods of great sanctity, Hatasou assured me) were disporting

themselves in a porphyry basin. How long we sat there I cannot tell, but

I know that we talked a good deal about fish, and gods, and Egyptian

habits, and Egyptian philosophy, and, above all, Egyptian love-making.

The last-named subject we found very interesting, and when once we got

fully started upon it, no diversion afterwards occurred to break the

even tenour of the conversation. Hatasou was a lovely figure, tall,

queenly, with smooth dark arms and neck of polished bronze: her big

black eyes full of tenderness, and her long hair bound up into a bright

Egyptian headdress, that harmonized to a tone with her complexion and

her robe. The more we talked, the more desperately did I fall in love,

and the more utterly oblivious did I become of my duty to Editha

Fitz-Simkins. The mere ugly daughter of a rich and vulgar brand-new

knight, forsooth, to show off her airs before me, when here was a

Princess of the Blood Royal of Egypt, obviously sensible to the

attentions which I was paying her, and not unwilling to receive them

with a coy and modest grace.

Well, I went on saying pretty things to Hatasou, and Hatasou went on

deprecating them in a pretty little way, as who should say, "I don't

mean what I pretend to mean one bit;" until at last I may confess that

we were both evidently as far gone in the disease of the heart called

love as it is possible for two young people on first acquaintance to

become. Therefore, when Hatasou pulled forth her watch--another piece of

mechanism with which antiquaries used never to credit the Egyptian

people--and declared that she had only three more hours to live, at

least for the next thousand years, I fairly broke down, took out my

handkerchief, and began to sob like a child of five years old.

Hatasou was deeply moved. Decorum forbade that she should console me

with too much _empressement_; but she ventured to remove the

handkerchief gently from my face, and suggested that there was yet one

course open by which we might enjoy a little more of one another's

society. "Suppose," she said quietly, "you were to become a mummy. You

would then wake up, as we do, every thousand years; and after you have

tried it once, you will find it just as natural to sleep for a

millennium as for eight hours. Of course," she added with a slight

blush, "during the next three or four solar cycles there would be plenty

of time to conclude any other arrangements you might possibly

contemplate, before the occurrence of another glacial epoch."

This mode of regarding time was certainly novel and somewhat bewildering

to people who ordinarily reckon its lapse by weeks and months; and I had

a vague consciousness that my relations with Editha imposed upon me a

moral necessity of returning to the outer world, instead of becoming a

millennial mummy. Besides, there was the awkward chance of being

converted into fuel and dissipated into space before the arrival of the

next waking day. But I took one look at Hatasou, whose eyes were filling

in turn with sympathetic tears, and that look decided me. I flung

Editha, life, and duty to the dogs, and resolved at once to become a

mummy.

There was no time to be lost. Only three hours remained to us, and the

process of embalming, even in the most hasty manner, would take up fully

two. We rushed off to the chief priest, who had charge of the particular

department in question. He at once acceded to my wishes, and briefly

explained the mode in which they usually treated the corpse.

That word suddenly aroused me. "The corpse!" I cried; "but I am alive.

You can't embalm me living."

"We can," replied the priest, "under chloroform."

"Chloroform!" I echoed, growing more and more astonished: "I had no idea

you Egyptians knew anything about it."

"Ignorant barbarian!" he answered with a curl of the lip; "you imagine

yourself much wiser than the teachers of the world. If you were versed

in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, you would know that chloroform is

one of our simplest and commonest anaesthetics."

I put myself at once under the hands of the priest. He brought out the

chloroform, and placed it beneath my nostrils, as I lay on a soft couch

under the central court. Hatasou held my hand in hers, and watched my

breathing with an anxious eye. I saw the priest leaning over me, with a

clouded phial in his hand, and I experienced a vague sensation of

smelling myrrh and spikenard. Next, I lost myself for a few moments, and

when I again recovered my senses in a temporary break, the priest was

holding a small greenstone knife, dabbled with blood, and I felt that a

gash had been made across my breast. Then they applied the chloroform

once more; I felt Hatasou give my hand a gentle squeeze; the whole

panorama faded finally from my view; and I went to sleep for a seemingly

endless time.

When I awoke again, my first impression led me to believe that the

thousand years were over, and that I had come to life once more to feast

with Hatasou and Thothmes in the Pyramid of Abu Yilla. But second

thoughts, combined with closer observation of the surroundings,

convinced me that I was really lying in a bedroom of Shepheard's Hotel

at Cairo. An hospital nurse leant over me, instead of a chief priest;

and I noticed no tokens of Editha Fitz-Simkins's presence. But when I

endeavoured to make inquiries upon the subject of my whereabouts, I was

peremptorily informed that I mustn't speak, as I was only just

recovering from a severe fever, and might endanger my life by talking.

Some weeks later I learned the sequel of my night's adventure. The

Fitz-Simkinses, missing me from the boat in the morning, at first

imagined that I might have gone ashore for an early stroll. But after

breakfast time, lunch time, and dinner time had gone past, they began to

grow alarmed, and sent to look for me in all directions. One of their

scouts, happening to pass the Pyramid, noticed that one of the stones

near the north-east angle had been displaced, so as to give access to a

dark passage, hitherto unknown. Calling several of his friends, for he

was afraid to venture in alone, he passed down the corridor, and through

a second gateway into the central hall. There the Fellahin found me,

lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from a wound on the breast, and

in an advanced stage of malarious fever. They brought me back to the

boat, and the Fitz-Simkinses conveyed me at once to Cairo, for medical

attendance and proper nursing.

Editha was at first convinced that I had attempted to commit suicide

because I could not endure having caused her pain, and she accordingly

resolved to tend me with the utmost care through my illness. But she

found that my delirious remarks, besides bearing frequent reference to a

princess, with whom I appeared to have been on unexpectedly intimate

terms, also related very largely to our _casus belli_ itself, the

dancing girls of Abu Yilla. Even this trial she might have borne,

setting down the moral degeneracy which led me to patronize so degrading

an exhibition as a first symptom of my approaching malady: but certain

unfortunate observations, containing pointed and by no means flattering

allusions to her personal appearance--which I contrasted, much to her

disadvantage, with that of the unknown princess--these, I say, were

things which she could not forgive; and she left Cairo abruptly with her

parents for the Riviera, leaving behind a stinging note, in which she

denounced my perfidy and empty-heartedness with all the flowers of

feminine eloquence. From that day to this I have never seen her.

When I returned to London and proposed to lay this account before the

Society of Antiquaries, all my friends dissuaded me on the ground of its

apparent incredibility. They declare that I must have gone to the

Pyramid already in a state of delirium, discovered the entrance by

accident, and sunk exhausted when I reached the inner chamber. In

answer, I would point out three facts. In the first place, I undoubtedly

found my way into the unknown passage--for which achievement I

afterwards received the gold medal of the Societee Khediviale, and of

which I retain a clear recollection, differing in no way from my

recollection of the subsequent events. In the second place, I had in my

pocket, when found, a ring of Hatasou's, which I drew from her finger

just before I took the chloroform, and put into my pocket as a keepsake.

And in the third place, I had on my breast the wound which I saw the

priest inflict with a knife of greenstone, and the scar may be seen on

the spot to the present day. The absurd hypothesis of my medical

friends, that I was wounded by falling against a sharp edge of rock, I

must at once reject as unworthy a moment's consideration.

My own theory is either that the priest had not time to complete the

operation, or else that the arrival of the Fitz-Simkins' scouts

frightened back the mummies to their cases an hour or so too soon. At

any rate, there they all were, ranged around the walls undisturbed, the

moment the Fellahin entered.

Unfortunately, the truth of my account cannot be tested for another

thousand years. But as a copy of this book will be preserved for the

benefit of posterity in the British Museum, I hereby solemnly call upon

Collective Humanity to try the veracity of this history by sending a

deputation of archaeologists to the Pyramid of Abu Yilla, on the last day

of December, Two thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven. If they do

not then find Thothmes and Hatasou feasting in the central hall exactly

as I have described, I shall willingly admit that the story of my New

Year's Eve among the Mummies is a vain hallucination, unworthy of

credence at the hands of the scientific world.

_THE FOUNDERING OF THE "FORTUNA."_