loved another woman--I never shall. Can you find it in your heart to
make my new life happy?"
"Mr. Derwent," she answered, "I had no idea that you cared. I--I
like you very much--as a friend. But now--I told you I had news
to-day--news which has made me happy--tuned me to the day, which is
happy. Jack has asked me to be his wife, and I have accepted him."
Derwent paled a little under his bronze, and his face darkened.
"If--if Mr. De Courcy had not come into your life----" he began.
"That is an idle thought."
"Yes, it is idle--but I thought--it would--if he had not come?"
"Who knows--I cannot realise a life without him." Then she added other
words. "I like you, Mr. Derwent, and--and I am very sorry."
He let her find her way back to the guests alone.
In the blindness of his jealousy he construed her words into an
admittance that she would have married him if it had not been for
De Courcy. They allowed no such interpretation, but jealousy is not
shrewd-sighted, and more often than not blunders.
They had not named him "Wild Gus," singling him out from among other
wild natures for the epithet, for nothing. All the passions which
had been restrained since his advent into society surged upwards and
confirmed him in a resolve. With the intention of carrying out that
resolve he returned to the tennis lawn.
[Illustration: "HE POURED THE CONTENTS OF THE PHIAL INTO HIS
COMPANION'S TUMBLER."]
Daphne, who, in spite of her flippant tongue, was possessed of a very
tender heart, was glad to see him, glad to notice the easy way in
which he passed from guest to guest talking of quiet matters with that
earnestness which had made him popular.
She had been troubled lest he had been too keenly disappointed. She
argued that if he cared much he could not hide his hurt so readily.
She lacked experience.
Derwent sought out De Courcy and congratulated him with a seeming
frankness that completely dispelled the young officer's aversion.
Daphne was standing quite close to them, and at the elder man's words
was glad.
"I do not pretend," he said, easily, "that we are not all envious, De
Courcy. You have gained a very great prize, and we should all be more
than human if we were not. But Miss Blakiston's happiness----" His
voice faded into an inarticulate murmur.
After dinner he told many stories to De Courcy, strong stories of a
man's life in wild lands, and De Courcy told himself that the Derwent
fellow was a very decent chap, and that he had underrated him vastly.
"There was little restraint in those early days in Nevada. A
man's friendship was true, and his hatred deadly. Vengeance was
swift-footed, and I have seen a man anger another and be laid out cold
under the blue sky in the very same day."
"Savage, Derwent, savage!" cried the Squire. "I'm glad that we have
laws and constables and magistrates here."
"We are all savage underneath."
De Courcy looked at him and laughed.
"I am glad, Derwent, that I am not likely to rile you. I should say
you would be apt to lapse into those primitive customs."
"De Courcy," the Squire said, "your father has gone away for the
night, hasn't he?"
"Yes. He's Rural Dean, you know, and has driven over to an outlying
parish. The rector is putting him up."
"Then you had better stop the night here. It will be lonely for you."
"Thanks, no. The governor would not care for the house to be left
to itself. You know, Derwent," he went on, "the governor is
awfully faddy, and will let no servant sleep in the Rectory but the
housekeeper, and she went two days ago to a dying daughter. Daughter
isn't dead yet, so I shall be entirely alone."
Derwent expressed surprise, yet he had been fully aware of this. It
was indeed current gossip in the village. The whims of the rector made
a good deal of conversation in the course of a year.
At ten o'clock Derwent and De Courcy started together. Both walked,
for the night was fine, though a strong wind came over the moor.
"Dear old moor!" De Courcy said. "It blows us strength in the hottest
of weather."
"The wind is strong--it will increase." Derwent remarked this with
satisfaction.
The Rectory, standing alone, was some little way from the village. It
was thatched, and there was much trellis-work over its face, dry and
warped with many days' suns. When they reached it Derwent was in the
middle of some exciting reminiscence.
"Come in," cried De Courcy, "come in. There's whisky and seltzer, or
soda, if you prefer it. You can have a pipe and finish your yarn. It
is quite early."
"Not for Grorepound," remonstrated Derwent. The lights in the village
were going out one after another like the sparks of an exploded
firework.
"But for us? I can't sleep without a pipe, and I expect you are the
same. Let us have our pipes in a sociable way instead of in silent
communion. Come."
Derwent went in with De Courcy, passing through the hall into the
library. The library window looked on to the lawn by the side of the
trellised porch.
As they entered the wind rattled the windows gustily.
"You will not find the wind so strong at the back," said Derwent.
"But I sleep in the front," explained De Courcy. "My room is the one
over this."
Derwent looked at the porch and smiled.
"Then," he said, "you will probably get little sleep to-night."
"Nonsense! I am used to noises. The stables are very near my quarters
at Canterbury, and the horses kick up a fearful row. Seltzer or soda?"
"Soda, thanks."
Derwent watched the other mix the drinks with a curious fascination.
When the tumblers were filled he turned to a portrait at the back of
De Courcy and over the sideboard.
"Is that your mother?" he asked.
The officer turned with a smile and looked for a moment at the face
smiling back at him. During that moment the elder man drew a small
phial from his waistcoat pocket, and poured its contents swiftly and
silently into the tumbler nearest his companion. It was a preparation
of opium which he used for insomnia, and invariably carried with him;
a small dose for one accustomed to the drug as he was, but one large
enough to ensure a very heavy sleep in anyone not habituated to it.
"Yes," said De Courcy, in a soft voice, "my mother. She died four
years ago. If there be any good about me I owe it to her. God never
gave man a better mother."
"Ah, I cannot remember my mother. She died when I was quite a
youngster."
He leant his head on his hand, shading it from the lamp. For a moment
neither man spoke, and then Derwent reached out his hand and took
the tumbler nearest to him, not the one into which he had poured the
opium.
"Come, De Courcy, we must drink to your bride. Miss Blakiston!" he
cried.
"Daphne, God bless her!" answered De Courcy.
Derwent watched him stealthily while he drank, smiling when he set
down the empty tumbler.
They remained together smoking for a quarter of an hour, Derwent
finishing the story which had been the means of his coming in. De
Courcy seemed to lose interest in it, and at its close, after yawning
once or twice, laughed.
"I am awfully sorry, but I've grown uncommonly sleepy. The effect of
the moor air, I expect," he said.
Derwent rose.
"My dear fellow, don't let me keep you up. I suffer from insomnia
so much that I would not willingly rob a man of a minute's sleep.
Good-night, and thanks. I can find my way out."
De Courcy protested, but Derwent was determined, and stumbled out into
the darkness. For a short while he examined the porch.
"It is dry enough," he muttered. "In half an hour he will be fast
asleep. Nothing will wake him--nothing shall wake him! How the wind
blows! It blew like this when I shot Black Dan by the Dumper's Claim.
Why do I think of that now? I must get back at once--there is little
time to be lost."
He strode in the direction of his own house. The butler only was
awake.
"I am very tired, John. I shall go to my room now. Lock up."
"Very good, sir."
"I shall be late in the morning. I have suffered from insomnia very
badly the last few nights, but now I know I shall sleep. Don't wake
me. Let me have my sleep out."
"Very good, sir."
Derwent went up to his room, undressed quickly, jumped into bed, and
lay there until he heard the butler pass along the corridor. Then he
rose and dressed hastily.
[Illustration: "CLINGING TO THE LEDGE OF THE WINDOW-SILL, HE CLOSED
THE WINDOW AFTER HIM."]
"They will be able to swear that I was home, and that my bed was
slept in," he said. He dressed in a rough, negligent style, unlike the
extreme order which he had observed since his return to England.
He opened the window and looked out. The wind rushed in and blew down
the heavy looking-glass, cracking it across.
"That," he said, "is unlucky. Some men would turn back at the omen. I
never was one to believe in omens. I never was a man to turn back."
A pipe ran close to his window. By it the way to the ground was easy.
Outside, clinging to the ledge of the window-sill with one hand, he
closed the window after him. Then he slid down the pipe, and walked
rapidly to the Rectory.
He approached it from the rear. The wind was in his face. It was so
violent that he kept his head down, and his eyes fixed upon a few
yards of the way before him.
What was that? Surely the night had grown lighter? Was the dawn
breaking? That was impossible--it was little after midnight. But the
hedges were plainly seen now, and before they had been blurred into
the general blackness. The road was lighter. There was no doubt of it.
Derwent stopped, and, holding his hat, looked up. In front of him the
sky was lurid, and over the roof of the Rectory close to hand were
long thin tongues of flame and showers of sparks. There was no doubt
about it. The thing he had come to do was already accomplished: the
Rectory was in flames, and the fire had started from the very quarter
he had planned. The wind was fanning it fiercely, as he had seen that
it would.
For a moment he was dazed, standing in the middle of the road, staring
at the spurting light dancing behind the Rectory, the house looking
black against the illumination beyond. Then he ran, struggling against
the wind, towards the fire. The reason of his going he did not stop
to analyse. He was impelled. The wind whirled his hat away, but he did
not notice it. In two minutes he was standing breathless in front of
the Rectory. The flames were licking round De Courcy's bedroom
window. He saw at once the cause of it. The lamp had overturned in the
library. Probably the wind had burst in the window and blown the lamp
over.
For a minute he stood gazing at the scene, and then he was conscious
of the arrival of Blakiston and his niece.
"Derwent!" the Squire shouted, "where is De Courcy?"
Derwent turned to him. The question seemed a repetition of the older
one, "Where is thy brother?" He looked at the Squire and at Daphne
clinging to her uncle's arm, white and terrified.
"He must be in his room," he said. "I left him over an hour ago. He
was going up then."
The flames leapt in a rush of demoniac exultation, and Daphne cowered.
"Mr. Derwent, can't you do something, can't you do something?" she
cried.
He did not answer her. He was busy with his own thoughts. He began to
realise that he loved her more than he had supposed men ever loved. It
seemed pitiful that she should suffer thus.
"Daphne saw the light from her room and hastened me over," said the
Squire, hurriedly, yet in that whispering awe which comes upon men in
view of a tragedy.
"He must be in his room," Derwent said, looking at the broad sheet
of flame licking the front of the house. Then he suddenly left them,
going in the direction of some outbuildings.
Daphne, fascinated with the horror of the scene, clung to her uncle
and moaned and prayed. The wind caught her hair and blew it about
sportively. The trellis-work crackled and burst in the heat.
"Derwent has gone for help," said the Squire.
"What help can get here quickly enough?" she wailed. "Oh, Jack, Jack,
my darling!"
Presently Derwent appeared, moving slowly. He was dragging something.
It seemed very heavy. When he came into the light they saw that it was
an old ladder, a primitive, rough ladder, very strong and very heavy.
He moved forward. The weight was great, but he was a strong man.
Twenty years of heavy work had firmed his muscles.
"Come!" he said to the Squire, "this is stout, it will last longer
against the flames."
The old man helped him rear it against the burning casement of the
bedroom. A shower of sparks fell upon them as they did it. One fell
upon Derwent's eye, and he swore as he brushed it aside. He had wanted
all his sight for the work he had before him. He did not care so much
for the pain, but the blindness which disabled one eye was serious.
He went over to Daphne.
"Give me something for my face--a handkerchief--anything!" he said,
roughly.
She took a silk handkerchief from her bosom. It felt warm to his
touch, and he was thrilled with a sudden sense of loss. He strode
quickly away from her and wrung it in the fountain sporting merrily in
front of the burning house. She followed him.
"Bind it round my mouth and nose," he cried.
She did it silently. Then she noticed his eye.
"You are hurt!" she cried.
"It is nothing. I wish it had come later, that is all. It won't matter
much in an hour's time."
She thought of his words after, but then she was too anxious.
"God bless you," she whispered, and he mounted the ladder. The flames
curled about him and licked his face and shoulders, but he did not
falter. Then he disappeared at the window, and they waited. The Squire
had found an old bowl and was throwing water from the fountain upon
the ladder, which here and there was beginning to burn. Daphne stood
watching the flames spurt and roar, and, with white lips, prayed
inaudibly. It was perhaps human that she thought little of Derwent and
all of Jack.
The heat beat back the Squire, and he stood looking helplessly at the
ladder now crackling in the flames.
[Illustration: "DERWENT APPEARED AT THE WINDOW BEARING DE COURCY IN
HIS ARMS."]
Suddenly Derwent appeared at the window. He was bearing De Courcy in
his arms. The flames rioted round him, and they could see that his
clothes were all charred.
"The staircase is a sheet of flame," he cried. "He was on his bed. The
flames have not reached him."
As he spoke the ladder snapped in the middle and fell, and Daphne
screamed, shutting out the scene with her hands, and then as suddenly
snatching them away.
Derwent, framed in the window and holding Jack in his arms, cursed at
it. For a moment he seemed nonplussed. Then he shouted--
"Blakiston, stand in as near as possible. I'm going to throw him out.
You can break his fall. It is only the drop of a few feet. Stand on
that bed, it will be softer."
The old man rushed to the spot. The flower bed seemed a good way
from the house, but the flames reached it in the eddies of the wind.
Daphne, realising what was meant, also went and stood on the bed.
She looked at the twelve feet or more between it and the house, and
wondered, yet never for a moment doubted that Derwent could do what he
purposed.
They breathlessly watched him brace his muscles. In the glow of the
light he looked grand, as a hero might, strengthening himself for his
last fight. Then, with a cry of warning, he threw the man out, and the
two waiting broke his fall. They, intent upon the rescued man, bore
him from the reach of the flames, forgetting for a moment the man who
had risked so much. When they looked he was gone.
The recoil had thrown him back, and the floor, rotten with the heating
of the fire, had broken away. They knew afterwards that he must have
been aware of the result, and that, knowing, he had given his life for
the other. For it would have been an easy thing for him to have jumped
himself had he been willing to sacrifice De Courcy.
De Courcy could never explain his insensibility that night.
"Felt beastly tired, and must have fallen asleep directly I got to my
room." He was rescued fully dressed. "I suppose the smoke suffocated
me and rendered me insensible before I awoke. If it had not been for
poor old Derwent I must have been burnt. What a grand fellow he was!"
Daphne often wonders at Derwent's words. "It won't matter much in
an hour's time," he had said, and it had not. And Jack's explanation
always seems unsatisfactory to her, though she has never said so.
Derwent's tomb, which is very handsome, but which contains nothing of
Derwent himself, bears the legend, "He gave his life for his friend";
but this is not true.
FROM A SMOKER'S MUSEUM.
SOME BEAUTIFUL AND QUAINT BURNERS OF TOBACCO.
BY T. C. HEPWORTH.
Smoking being so universal, it is no matter for surprise that much
ingenuity has been spent over the chief implement concerned in its
practice. We put cigar and cigarette smoking aside, having nothing to
do with the object of the present article; moreover, both the cigar
and cigarette are of comparatively recent introduction.
[Illustration: EXQUISITE VENETIAN-GLASS PIPE.]
[Illustration: IRON PIPE MADE AS A KEY.]
The pipe is the popular smoking appliance and most smokers give it the
preference over everything else that can be smoked. It also has the
support of the ladies, and any careful housewife will tell us that
she would rather admit three or four pipe smokers to her curtained and
carpeted rooms than one of those horrid cigars, which leaves its faint
and disagreeable odour hanging about the place for many days. Ladies,
indeed, are more tolerant of tobacco smoke than they used to be.
The first kind of European pipes were walnut shells, a hole being
bored in one side for the reception of the stem--a common straw. It
is possible that we get from this early form of tobacco pipe the term
"straw," as applied to modern long clays, if, indeed, they are not
named like _straw_-berries, from the material which protects them from
injury.
The custom of using a pipe common to an assembled company was, no
doubt, partly due to the circumstance that tobacco was at one time a
most costly thing. Three years after its introduction here it cost per
ounce what would be equivalent to 18_s._ of our present money. Later
on it became the custom for a purchaser to throw into the scale a
silver coin, and he received just as much tobacco in return as would
balance his money.
For the same reason the bowls of early pipes were very small, witness
our photographs of early English pipes dug up at Chelsea which could
be filled many dozen times over with a single ounce of tobacco. But,
as in all other things, demand stimulated supply, until tobacco in our
own day has become remarkably cheap. Perhaps some of our readers
who pay fourpence an ounce for their little luxury may traverse this
statement, forgetting that the value of the weed which they purchase
is only about one fourth of what they pay for it, the difference going
to H.M. Customs.
After the walnut and straw pipes had had their day, clay pipes became
common in this country, where smoking became general after the great
plague of London in 1665. To this pestilence we owe the suddenly
increased use of tobacco, for it was bruited abroad that of all the
tradesmen of London the tobacconists alone had not been attacked by
the disease.
[Illustration: CARVED WOOD PIPE, 6-1/2 INCHES HIGH. TOBACCO PLACED
BEHIND HORSE'S HEAD.]
Smoking was recognised as a valuable sanitary precaution against the
malady, and we find quaint old Pepys mentioning the fact in his famous
diary after seeing two houses in Drury Lane marked with a red cross on
their portals--the token of a plague-stricken household. "It put me,"
he says, "in an illconception of myself and my smell, so that I was
forced to buy some roll tobacco to smell to, and chaw, which took away
my apprehension."
[Illustration: 17TH CENTURY CLAY PIPE.]
Clay pipes have an enormous sale in this country at the present day,
and we may assume that the publicans are the chief buyers, for it
has long been the custom to give pipes away to patrons of beershops,
without making any charge. Such pipes are mostly made from a
Dorsetshire clay, the material being first well kneaded, moulded into
pipe form, then dried, and lastly burnt in a kiln. The work of making
this kind of pipe is so expeditious that a manufacturer can count on
an output of five hundred pipes per day from each hand employed.
At one time there was a demand for "clays" of a more ornate kind, some
of the bowls representing heads of popular or unpopular personages.
For example, when the great Duke of Wellington tried to stop smoking
in the army, except from the muzzles of the guns, he was caricatured
in a pipe bowl in which his famous nose was given undue proportions,
while the neck of the pipe bore the figure of a subaltern emulating
the rude conduct of the gentleman in the Ingoldsby Legends--
"The sacristan said not one word
To indicate a doubt,
He put his thumb unto his nose
And spread his fingers out."
In the same way the French pipes offered endless variety--one pipe
would represent a devil's head; another a skull; a favourite was the
head of John Bull treated in a conventional way and not too flattering
a spirit. There is also a well-known pipe bearing the head of a
Dutchman stuck in a wooden shoe.
But if we want to find variety in pipe design, we must search for it
in that country of great smokers--Germany. It would be quite easy to
fill an entire number of this publication with pictures of pipes
from the German empire, and we have access to collections which would
afford endless variety of designs, for pipe collecting is almost as
popular a hobby as that of stamp collecting. Here we give three very
remarkable examples, as different as they could possibly be.
[Illustration: OLD ENGLISH EARTHENWARE SNAKE PIPE.]
First, we show a pipe in the form of a key. It is made of iron, as
many of the early pipes were; some were of brass, silver, or other
metals; but as knowledge increased, and people learnt that these
metals are greedy of heat, they were discarded for more suitable
materials.
Our second German example is a very well carved figure of a mounted
cavalry officer, made of wood, with silver armour and trappings. This
is an eighteenth century pipe, and the original is no less than six
and a half inches in height. It will be noted that the bowl proper is
in the lower part of the horse's neck, this part of the animal being
hinged so that the tobacco can be inserted. The pipe stem fits into a
kind of holster at the back. This is essentially a pipe for home use,
for although it is not heavy, considering its size, few men would care
to be seen smoking such a huge thing out of doors.
[Illustration: THE TWO CLAY PIPES ON THIS PAGE WERE FOUND IN MILMAN'S
ROW, CHELSEA.]
[Illustration: TRIPLE-BOWL PIPE FOR SMOKING THREE KINDS OF TOBACCO.]
[Illustration: ITALIAN PIPE OF MOTHER-OF-PEARL.]
Our third example from Deutschland is a triple-bowl pipe very finely
carved out of one solid piece of hard wood, and mounted with silver
tops, etc. There always have been, and probably always will be,
persons who prefer to go a roundabout way to accomplish a thing which
can be done by far easier means. These simple folk are satirised by
genial Artemus Ward in a story of a person who was immured in a gloomy
prison. He tried the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and endeavoured to
remove the iron bars from the window. Next he tried to escape by the
chimney. When suddenly "a lucky thort" struck him. "He opened the door
and walked out."
Now, it is quite certain that a man possessing this amount of resource
would never have designed a pipe with three bowls in order that he
might at the same moment inhale three different kinds of tobacco;
he would have done what many smokers prefer to do at the present
day--that is, he would have mingled his various kinds of tobacco and
smoked them in a pipe of normal construction. The modern German pipes,
affected chiefly by students, are too well known to need illustration.
They have most capacious bowls of porcelain, and bear a painted
picture, generally the representation of a more or less pretty maid.
But the Germans and French must not have it all their own way with the
curiosities of pipeland. We give a photograph of an English one, which
may be meant for a snake with a man's head, or a catherine wheel;
and, if its coils could be opened out, it would measure many feet
in length. It is made of earthenware, of a buff colour, covered
with brown spots. He would be a bold man who would venture into the
smoking-room of a London club with such a grotesque thing between his
lips. But it was used before the days of modern clubs.